For millennia the written word has held special significance among those whose faith is centered on scripture. Some ancient Jewish and Islamic traditions imposed safeguards to prevent the desecration of any piece of writing—sacred or secular—that might bear God’s name. Christian history is marked by missionaries and others who made literacy and education a priority, […]
Exploring The Silk Road, With Kids
As a dabbler in literary translation, I was delighted by the recent discovery that September is World Kid Lit month. The designation provides—so I gather—librarians and other book enthusiasts with an excuse to promote children’s books translated into English. I was further intrigued to learn that the day selected for the UN’s international Translation Day […]
Explorers, Observers, and Artists
Summer days can provide families with welcome relief from school routines and responsibilities. They can also stretch out like the trackless sea before the weary and overstimulated parent. Nature observation provides an economical, accessiblechange of pace. Highly flexible, it can expand to fill an empty afternoon or contract to fit into a spare fifteen minutes. Keeping an explorers’ bag packed facilitates a hasty escape to the outdoors when the notion strikes and forestalls loss of momentum in the search […]
Parenting Pigeons
Pincushion, porcupine, paleolithic—a procession of alliteratives suggested themselves to my writer’s brain as I goggled at the two-week-old squabs. My first four starter pigeons had arrived by airmail nearly three years prior; these were my first hatchlings. Between me and the pigeons it was clear that one or more of us had been confused about […]
D, by Michel Faber
The hidden-picture nature of this engaging middle-grade novel accounts for some portion of its appeal: Can you spot the echoes of Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Lewis Carroll, and J.K. Rowling? (Not to mention a host of others with whom I’m likely unacquainted. Literary influences cited by the author alerted me to The Wonderful […]