Where do writers get their ideas?
November 4, 2010
I am curious about most everything, including where do writers get their ideas? Truman Capote is a favorite author of mine and I continue to ask myself: “Did Truman just know more interesting people that I know—where did he find the people he wrote about, who inhabit his stories?” OR was it just that the power of his imagination was greater than mine? I will never know the answer to that question, but I suspect it is the later. Let me share with you an anecdote from another one of my favorite authors about where he gets his ideas. Tim Wynne-Jones said: “A crow likes to steal shiny bits of the world and hoard them away in its nest: pull tabs, gum wrappers, bread ties, rings. Writers are like crows. They call their nests stories.”
Picture books thrive—and for good reason!
October 28, 2010
Picture books unpopular?! Many parents are pressing their young children to leave picture books behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books. Do we really need to wonder why too many children do not like to read and find reading a chore and a bore? To all parents—mindful of the increasing rigorous standardized testing in […]
Congratulations Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian-born novelist recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature
October 21, 2010
Like most readers I pay attention to and like awards because they point the way to writers and books I might not meet otherwise. At the same time I make sure I treat the awards, not the winners, with a bit of levity. To honor our recent winner, let me quote from one of his […]
A New Yorker Cover…for book lovers.
October 15, 2010
I could not resist sharing the October 18,2010 cover from The New Yorker magazine, entitled, “Shelved” by Roz Chast.
The Pledge of Allegiance—the story behind the story.
October 11, 2010
The Pledge of Allegiance was first recited on October 12, 1892 to celebrate the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America. The Pledge, by Jeffrey Owen Jones and Peter Meyer is a fascinating book full of intriguing information about that time in history, which sheds light on the “back story” to how […]
