“Look, you can make a difference in your child’s life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.”
January 4, 2012
Congratulations to Walter Dean Myers on being named the national ambassador for young people’s literature, a sort of poet laureate of the children’s book world. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/books/walter-dean-myers-ambassador-for-young-peoples-literature.html?pagewanted=all
His message comes from his own experiences as an African-American man who dropped out of high school but built a successful writing career largely because of his life-long devotion to books.
I applaud his message!
“ We’ve given children this idea that reading and books are a nice option if you want that kind of thing. I hope we can get over than idea.” I think that what we need to do is say reading is going to really affect your life. Hoping to speak directly to low-income minority parents, he wants to say ‘ Look, you can make a difference in your child’s life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.”
Bring in the New Year 2012: Take a ride on a butterfly.
December 28, 2011
Don’t be like the two caterpillars who were crawling along on the ground when a butterfly flew over them. And one caterpillar said to the other, “You’ll never catch me going up on one of those.” But I’ll ride a butterfly any day. And I hope you will too. ~Madeleine L’Engle
The Importance of free-thinking bookstores.
December 16, 2011
George Whitman, the American-born owner of Shakespeare & Company, a bookshop on the Left Bank in Paris dies at the ripe age of 98. He opened his bookshop in 1951 because he believed the book business was the business of life. He welcomed visitors with large in-print messages on the walls- and one of my […]
Why do children want the same book read over and over and over again?
December 7, 2011
The many rewards of rereading were recently recalled in an article in the NYT: “Read it again, Sam.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/books/review/read-it-again-sam.html We remember our first encounter and reaction to a book, and at the same time, we are amazed to think that the book has somehow changed. The experience of rereading keeps you in the moment and […]
Make your Thanksgiving a culinary and literary feast.
November 23, 2011
Is there a child who has never felt ignored by a grown-up? The children’s books of Florence Parry Heide (2/1919-10/2011) made the world a better place. My Thanksgiving this year goes to her wonderful book, The Shrinking Of Treehorn, illustrated by Edward Gorey. A delightful book and cautionary tale to parents who try to ignore […]
