Publications about books for children and young adults
That New York Times “Room for Debate” on adults reading young adult books is an odd mess. Of the seven essayists, only two actually grapple with the posited question: “Why have young adult books become so popular so quickly — even with not-so-young adults?” Patricia McCormick preaches to the choir that YA books are more [...]
As an urban twenty-something with a CSA farm share, a crush on Michael Pollan, and the occasional yearning to dangle tomato plants from my third-story apartment windows, I think a bit too much about where my food comes from. I often wonder how much of my insanity I will impart upon my future offspring. Will [...]
Raymond Bial, well-known author of nonfiction for children (Ellis Island: Coming to the Land of Liberty; Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side; Amish Home; Frontier Home), has just published a novel, one “intended primarily for adults,” according to the promotional copy on the back of the (attractive) paperback. Set in small-town 1959 Indiana [...]
Here we are in Provincetown with friend Pam (other friend Lori was taking the picture), replete from days of Chex Mix and chocolate and Yahtzee, a game I thought I had mastered after years of battling AI opponents only to lose every time in this my first experience with the non-virtual dice variety. Also did [...]
We talked about this trend of shiny-ing up books last week when Martha P. and I did a Family of Readers gig at the Duxbury Free Library for the Westwinds Bookshop. I speculated that the books that would best survive digital competition would be those that most rewarded or required physical presence–airport novels out, picture [...]
I hope everyone who celebrates it had a good Thanksgiving. Yesterday I dined in the company of, among others, a high school freshman who declared her absolute allegiance to Kristin Cashore. We are both looking forward to Bitterblue. She also bragged about having read Ayn Rand, but I put that little notion in its place [...]
Has anyone else read this yet? By Ernest Cline, Ready Player One is set in the near future (2044) when the world has gone mostly to shit and people spend as much time as they can in The Oasis, an enormous virtual reality universe. The enormously wealthy creator of Oasis–the most valuable property on the [...]
For adults passionate about children’s books, these new biographical works will, through very different approaches, foster appreciation of two prominent figures in children’s literature. After rereading the Little House books she loved as a kid, Wendy McClure renews her obsession with all things Laura Ingalls Wilder and chronicles it in The Wilder Life: My Adventures [...]
>We’ve posted our suggestions for summer reading–strictly recreational–so dig in. For the grownups, I’m recommending Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, an orgy of Victoriana with a bracing touch of postmodernism and what I think (I’m only a few hours into the forty-something houred audio edition) is going to be a lot of [...]
