Esteemed editors, authors, and translators discuss their work behind the scenes to bring children’s books from all over the world to the U.S. market. Foremost on their minds? Young readers. Join the live program December 14. Translating any book is a challenge, but bringing books from around the world into the laps of young readers…

“There was nothing Anna wanted more than to write a normal book,” writes Olga Ravn in her new novel, “My Work.” Try as she may, however, the protagonist “kept on writing strange texts that jumped all over the place.” Ravn’s novel is itself a strange text. Through its singular collage of prose, poetry, diary, script…

Emma Otheguy’s “I Can Read!” book Reina Ramos Works It Out was among the 64 titles in Scholastic’s controversial “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice” collection.  I celebrated when I found out I was going to have a book in the beloved Scholastic Book Fair, but my excitement was short-lived. Just two weeks after I heard the…

The Alumni Association at UC Santa Cruz is proud to present this year’s honorees of the UCSC Alumni Awards. These awards recognize and honor alumni who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievements, made distinct contributions to society, provided impactful contributions to UCSC, and who have embodied the values and spirit of the university.   For her remarkable…

What defines the strongest fictional characters?  The most intriguing ones are often developed, revealed or transformed based on their wishes and desires; in other words, what they crave. The more intense the craving, the more commanding the character. In fact, character cravings frequently create the conflicts and plots. What would the evil stepmother in Sleeping…

Carrots. Puffed sleeves. Scrapes. Liniment. Kindred spirits. Bosom friends. To some readers, this collection of words will read like a haiku gone wrong. But to a certain contingent of old-fashioned bookworms, it’s a trail of bread crumbs leading to a redheaded Canadian orphan named Anne Shirley. She blazed into the world in 1908 as an…

This spring, I fell in love with John Gower, who died in 1408. For months I’d been reading his poems in their modern print editions with a scholarly disinterest. Then at the Huntington Library one morning, my stomach fluttered when I opened the cover of a fourteenth-century manuscript of his most famous work, Confessio Amantis,…

Lately, there’s been a lot of attention on how children learn to read, and I’m heartened that phonics is making a comeback. But sounding out words (also called “decoding”) can be laborious for young readers. As the mother of three and a veteran educator who believes passionately that a love of reading is foundational to…