Shel Silverstein Country Songwriting Legend

In addition to The Giving Tree, Silverstein penned other beloved children’s classics in his life and worked with the legendary children’s editor Ursula Nordstrom. Among them are the popular Where The Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and The Missing Piece. But before getting his footing in children’s literature, the renowned author had another career: he wrote country music, some of which may be familiar. Born in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood in 1930, Shel Silverstein began his wide-ranging career of words and art when he was drafted into the U....

January 3, 2023 · 6 min · 1086 words · Ann Dortch

Shop Small With This Literary Fall Decor

As an Arizona girl currently writing this at the end of a summer filled with record-breaking heat (50+ days of 110 or greater!), the change in seasons doesn’t necessarily mean crisp fall air outside. What more reason do I need to make my home library into a bookish autumn wonderland? Bring the coziness of autumn into your own home reading space with this literary fall decor. Bookish Fall Decor for a Cozy Reading Space I’m dreaming of how this book page flower garland would look hanging over my shelves....

January 3, 2023 · 2 min · 283 words · Frederick Larsen

Size Matters On The Lost Art Of Brevity

Brevity is a lost art. Harry Potter : 7 books/4,095 pages with a 585 page average; shortest at 309 pages and longest at 870 A Song of Fire and Ice: 5 books, 2 more on the way/2,562 pages; the 854 page average skewed thanks to the 1056 page A Dance With Dragons The Millennium Trilogy: 3 books/1,905 pages with a 635 page average It’s not like books have never been atrociously long before – Les Miserables clocks in at 1042 pages....

January 3, 2023 · 3 min · 525 words · Clare Kallas

Some Of The Most Controversial Book Opinions

The truth is that there is a very fine line between a controversial book opinion and a boring one. Your “The Catcher in the Rye is boring and whiny” meets my “Actually, The Catcher in the Rye is a brilliant meditation on grief” right in the middle and neither one holds up under scrutiny; perhaps both are true, perhaps we’re both phonies. For reasons that I cannot fathom, opinions like “It’s okay to read nothing but graphic novels” and “Listening to audiobooks counts as reading” are still considered controversial, while also being incredibly boring....

January 3, 2023 · 3 min · 578 words · Raymond Ford

Soul Warming John Green Quotes And Prints

And I know I’m not alone in saying John Green’s books helped me in a time when I needed help. They’re wonderful friends I can keep nearby and return to whenever I need a boost. Here are some of my favorite John Green quotes from each of his novels, along with some pretty prints you can purchase on Etsy. Quotes from Looking for Alaska “Thomas Edison’s last words were ‘It’s very beautiful over there’....

January 3, 2023 · 3 min · 577 words · Barbara Moultrie

Spooky Season Reading List Explosion The List List 420

at Brightly: Surefire YA Scares: 18 of the Best Teen Horror Books at Bustle: The Most Anticipated Books Of October Include Some Spooky Halloween Tales at BuzzFeed: 13 Witchy Books That Will Keep You Spellbound at Crime Reads: Eight Dazzling Historical Thrillers Featuring Real Life Jewels and Painting at Electric Lit: 12 Books on How Midwives Are Changing Childbirth at Entertainment Weekly: 7 spooky novels to read this Halloween season, according to Plain Bad Heroines author Emily M....

January 3, 2023 · 1 min · 199 words · Grace Parker

Spotlight On Random House Graphic Comics For Kids And Teens

This year, several other major (and minor, and indie) publishers are launching imprints set to bring tales of wonder and adventure aimed to middle grade and young adult readers in graphic novel format. One of 2020’s first releases from a new imprint, Johan Troïanowski’s The Runaway Princess, drops January 21 from Random House Graphic. Random House Graphic’s mission is to publish, “… graphic novels for kids and teens of every age and interest, fiction and nonfiction… committed to championing the creativity and diversity of our authors…” The Runaway Princess contains three different stories (‘The Princess Runs Away [and makes some friends],’ ‘The Princess Runs Away Again [by accident this time], and ‘The Princess Tries to Stay in One Place [but the weather doesn’t cooperate],’) about Princess Robin....

January 3, 2023 · 4 min · 790 words · Clifford Freeman

Spring 2021 Ya Paperbacks For Your Tbr

Find below a roundup of some of the most exciting YA paperbacks hitting shelves this spring. Because publication dates can shift — and many have because of COVID-19 — these are as current as can be expected. Some of these books are paperback originals, meaning they’ll only ever release in paperback, while others are first releases in paperback of books that have already been published in hardcover. I’ve stuck to first books in a series only, so know there are additional paperback releases of series books that are not the start of those series....

January 3, 2023 · 50 min · 10442 words · James Wilson

Star Wars Reading Challenge For Episode Ix

To make it even easier, given the time constraints, I’ll add my favorites under the prompts—but by no means is this prescriptive. There are so many great books in the Star Wars universe from which to choose, especially in the new canon. All of these new voices really get the galaxy and the characters, and it’s really been fun to read the books and get new perspectives on these individuals, both old and new....

January 3, 2023 · 3 min · 622 words · Robert Stivers

Starting A Commonplace Book Has Changed The Way I Read

I’m using Notion for my commonplace book, and it’s not only just as pretty (in a different way) as a handwritten journal, it’s also easily searchable! I can tag quotes, and then browse through the tags, so it’s easy to find all the passages I’ve collected about family, change, transformation, nature, etc. I can also choose a cover photo for each quote, and I’ve discovered that one of my favorite parts of the process is browsing through Unsplash, searching for a photo that captures the essence of the quote....

January 3, 2023 · 4 min · 777 words · Carla Taylor

Strong Women In Fiction Don T Just Wield Swords

But, my issue is the fact that people think powerful women are only those who can wield a sword or go into battle without second-guessing themselves. A woman’s physicality is not the only factor for being strong. This issue was discussed on Twitter after Game of Thrones’s Battle of Winterfell. Many people tweeted out criticism towards Sansa Stark for staying with the citizens of Winterfell deep in the heart of the crypts, safely hidden away from the fight, while her sister Arya was in the midst of the explosive battle that rocked the world....

January 3, 2023 · 6 min · 1144 words · Ethel Loges

Sum Great Books About Math For Your Reading Pleasure

From Ben Orlin, the popular blogger and author of Math With Bad Drawings comes Change Is The Only Constant — an engaging and eloquent exploration of the intersection between calculus and daily life, complete with Orlin’s sly humor and wonderfully bad drawings. By spinning 28 engaging mathematical tales, Orlin shows us that calculus is simply another language for things we grapple with every day — love, risk, time, and critically, change....

January 3, 2023 · 6 min · 1188 words · John Zito

Swoon Over The Best Older Couple Romance Books

Historically, romance skews very young with heroes and heroines from 18 to 25. More recently, that age has increased to reflect the reality of our society. More millennials are unmarried than any generation before us. As a result, the age in many contemporary romances has increased to late 20s. I love to see more diversity in any form infiltrate a genre, but still I’m looking for grown folks who have lived some life, characters I could learn something from because they’ve been on the earth longer than I have....

January 3, 2023 · 2 min · 307 words · Jennifer Crawford

Sylvia Plath In Pop Culture

The poet Sylvia Plath’s legacy lives on in nearly every avenue of pop culture. There’s the literary world, of course, which has created many a Plath biography, or a collection of poetry inspired by her work, or a young adult novel set in an alternate Plath-inspired reality. More interestingly, though, there are many movies and songs about Plath, both in the form of biopics and as people who view her as a heroic icon or feminine ideal....

January 3, 2023 · 5 min · 920 words · Sue Slager

Take The Quiz To Find Out Which Harry Potter Witch You Are

Now that you know which HP witch you are, you might also be interested in this literary witch quiz, this Harry Potter reading soulmate quiz, this Discworld witch quiz, this literary magician quiz, and this quiz to find out which character from the Chronicles of Narnia you are.

January 3, 2023 · 1 min · 48 words · Holly Hurst

Take This Trick Or Treating Quiz And We Ll Tell You What Spooky Book To Read

What makes a book spooky? Well, it could be a bit of haunting. Perhaps it’s a mysterious power or touch of the unknown. Maybe it’s an ancient curse. Or it could be good old fashioned murder. The possible results of this quiz show a wide variety of things that go bump in the night. And lucky for you, once you’ve got your results, you can check out all of the books recommended in the trick or treating quiz at the bottom of the page....

January 3, 2023 · 2 min · 417 words · Kent Henson

Tales Of A Library Unicorn A Magic Spell To Find Any Kid A Book

Best known for finding the wreck of the Titanic, celebrated adventurer Robert Ballard has a lifetime of stories about exploring the ocean depths. From discovering new extremophile life-forms thriving at 750°F hydrothermal vents in 1977 to finding famous shipwrecks including the Bismarck and PT 109, Ballard has made history. For the first time, Ballard gets personal, telling the inside stories of his adventures and challenges as a midwestern kid with dyslexia who became an internationally renowned ocean explorer....

January 3, 2023 · 2 min · 365 words · Diane Nava

Ten Bookish Lessons For My Young Daughters

Here are my ten bookish lessons for my young daughters. What are the bookish lessons you’ve taught your favorite young people? Reading starts early. I’m sure my kids remember me reading The Brothers Karamazov out loud when they were in the womb. I’m planning to quiz them about it tomorrow. If I fall asleep while reading my kids a bedtime story, they know it is entirely appropriate to cuddle with me and gently stroke my hair until I wake up....

January 3, 2023 · 3 min · 506 words · Melanie Brown

Test Your Comics Knowledge Real Doctor Or Fake Doctor

Marvel superhero Dr. Stephen Strange was a neurosurgeon before a car accident damaged his hands too much to continue in his day job, so he learned magic instead. I hear that happens during a lot of residencies. Most, but not all of the time, DC superhero Doctor Fate is the combination of a human host and a Lord of Order named Nabu. There have been a whopping eight human hosts to Doctor Fate over the years, and only the seventh, Kent V....

January 3, 2023 · 3 min · 632 words · Michael Werner

The 12 Best Graphic Novels And Comics Of 2022

There was and still is something that captivates me about the pairing of words and pictures. It almost bridged the gap between prose and film, but it’s still very much its own art form. Each artist brings something different to the story. And when artist and writer are the same person , those can be some of the most touching and personal stories in any medium. I looked far and wide through my 2022 reading to compile the list of the 12 absolute best comics of 2022....

January 3, 2023 · 1 min · 177 words · Alfredo Lopez