How do you choose a favorite, a best? Which would you pick before all the rest? In college, some friends of mine had a poster of Wassily Kandinsky’s “Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles” hanging up in their room. Anyone coming for a study break or evening chat was invited to look at the poster […]

The first thing to catch my eye about Corey Ann Haydu’s Eventown was the phrase “twin sister” on the inside flap. Being a twin myself, I love reading twin stories. It’s so interesting to me to see what authors imagine twin life to be like, whether it’s close to my own experience or not. I’m […]

I’m constantly on the lookout for just the right book to share in my library storytimes. Sometimes these programs can be a bit chaotic: twenty or thirty people in the room, and lots of jumping and counting, clapping and stomping. With quieter groups (or to try to recover a sense of calm during a crazy […]

“Everything old is new again,” so they say—a trend that I think is true of books, too, no doubt helped along by all the recent reboots, remakes, and reimaginings of old stories for new audiences at the movies. I am so excited for this coming Christmas release of a new film adaptation of Little Women, […]

I’ve been thinking lately about poetry, about what sticks in our minds when we hear a poem. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the meter. I was watching TV the other day and heard some lines that I knew immediately were Shakespeare, even though I was unfamiliar with them. They just sounded like […]