Last week’s launch of The Edge of the Forest immediately brought to mind fond memories of another children’s literature journal, the late and lamented Riverbank Review.

When I was a novice children’s writer, Riverbank Review was one of my first clues that I’d stumbled into something special. A print quarterly, it offered thoughtful, sumptuous articles, essays, reading lists and reviews. I’m not sure how I found out about it — through Harold Underdown, perhaps? — but Riverbank Review immediately made me feel welcome in a warm and wonder-filled community.

As much as I enjoyed — and still enjoy — receiving the SCBWI and Children’s Writer newsletters, the arrival of Riverbank Review was something I longed for. If you’d like to see for yourself what I was so enraptured by, have a look at Chris Raschka’s cover art, this Marc Aronson article from the unpublished final issue, and the farewell by editor Martha Davis Beck.