Posts tagged as:

books for boys

reading: interactive communication ne plus ultra

May 2, 2012

It’s been too long, my darlings. Working like a fiend at my day job and finishing a draft of a novel in the wee hours filled my winter as the snow we didn’t have might have filled in the cracks and crevices in the landscape, quieting the noise of the world and making it difficult [...]

Read the full article →

The Joy of Books

January 12, 2012

Found the above on this delightful site with the silly name sent to me by my sister-in-law (thank you!). The photos on the site make me want to pound the table and say, with Sally, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” (I heart bookshelves.)

Read the full article →

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen; Alan Garner, 1960

December 17, 2011

Christopher Middleton, in The Telegraph, tells you anything you might need to know about The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and talks with Alan Garner and other writers about the effect it’s had on over 50 years of readers and writers. I will add this, though Middleton mentions it: most claustrophobic scene in all of fiction! Well, [...]

Read the full article →

Letters from Father Christmas; J. R. R. Tolkien (1920-1943; first published 1976)

December 12, 2011

Another holiday favorite in this house are the extraordinary letters and drawings Father Christmas sent the Tolkien children between 1920 and 1943. Take a moment to remember the world created by Tolkien in The Hobbit and the Ring Trilogy, remember the maps, drawings and paintings with which he illustrated them, and then imagine being the [...]

Read the full article →

Reading aloud in Advent time

December 10, 2011

I’ve been silent for weeks here, finishing NaNoWriMo (52K, baby!) and then, guess what, having so much fun on the current novel that it’s all I want to work on in those wee dark morning moments I secrete away for my creative delight. And by the way, I wasn’t having much fun for the first [...]

Read the full article →

Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymous Bosch; Nancy Willard & The Dillons, 1992

October 31, 2011

It’s time to start thinking about holiday gifts (if you’re not one of those people who did it all in July). For the children on your list, you can never go wrong with books. Most kids don’t have enough, and those few who do, who are tripping over piles of them in their bedroom—well, hopefully [...]

Read the full article →

On the way home (two delightful books for kids)

September 29, 2011

Flew from Portland to Portland with no sleep. I paused in Newark in between and saw all my pals from my first pass through—it was Saturday morning again—the 15-year-old Arab-American girl who told me why jobs in the airport are the best around, the nice guy who’d taken my photo with Betty Boop the week [...]

Read the full article →

Thank you, Portland

September 28, 2011

For a blissful movie experience at Living Room Theaters. See Gainsbourg if you can (most smoking EVER in a movie). It’s made by the same fabulous woman, Joann Sfar, who wrote and illustrated the graphic novel The Rabbi’s Cat.

For yummy tacos at Por Qué No? and lush Pho at Jade Teahouse.
For stellar yoga classes, yin [...]

Read the full article →

Half Magic; Edward Eager, illustrated by N. M. Bodecker (1954)

April 5, 2011

When thinking about presents to bring to children I don’t see often enough, I tend to return to old favorites. Half Magic is one of these, the first of Edward Eager’s books, all beloved since my childhood and now beloved to my kids, all with memorable illustrations by N. M. Bodecker.
Modern children, subjected to some [...]

Read the full article →

Life, death, and French

February 2, 2011

A month seems long enough to be silent, a strange month turning on the multifarious spokes of the wheel of life. Death, coming to people we think too young to die—we, with our secret hopes of long, fulfilling lives, of seeing our grandchildren and great-grandchildren be born. And birth, which can come earlier than it [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries