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I read Canadian Day is Wednesday Nov. 8. Here are some kids books to celebrate the day
With I Read Canadian Day happening on Nov. 8, here are some contenders for kids, all written by Canadian authors and illustrators: Open this photo in gallery: Weird Rules to Follow, Kim Spencer (Orca, 9-12). So far this year, Weird Rules has won the IODE Violet Downey Book Award, the Geoffrey Bilson Historical Fiction Award,…
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Librarians turn to civil rights agency to oppose book bans and their firings
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — She refused to ban books, many of them about racism and the experiences of LGBTQ people. And for that, Suzette Baker was fired as a library director in a rural county in central Texas. “I’m kind of persona non grata around here,” said Baker, who had headed the Kingsland, Texas, library system…
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7 Books About Objects That Changed the World
Back in high school in the 1990s, I was taught history with a capital “H,” the kind of history that focused on a single narrative. It was a view of history that revealed only the narrowest strip of the past, a thin swath of experience from which many people, places, and ideas were excluded. Microhistories…
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Katherine Marsh, National Book Award finalist for young people’s literature, has thoughts on how to get kids to read
In “The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine,” Katharine Marsh’s National Book Award finalist for young people’s literature, a 13-year-old-boy finds a black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings that leads to family secrets. Marsh, who has Russian and Ukrainian heritage, drew from her own family history for her middle grade novel about…
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Anuja Varghese’s short story collection Chrysalis among $25K Governor General’s Literary Award winners
Hamilton writer Anuja Varghese has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for her short story collection Chrysalis. Chrysalis is among the 14 titles, seven in English and seven in French, that were acknowledged by the Governor General’s Literary Awards as the best books in 2023. The prizes, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, are awarded in seven English-language…
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Why Do Books Have Chapters?
One has to read your book to get the full answer, but can you give a synopsis of why books have chapters? Chapters, as a mode of segmenting longer texts, go back to classical antiquity, and are older even than the codex, our form of book. There are chapter divisions and chapter headings in ancient…
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Has It Ever Been Harder to Make a Living As An Author?
In early August, after Andrew Lipstein published The Vegan, his sophomore novel, a handful of loved ones asked if he planned to quit his day job in product design at a large financial technology company. Despite having published two books with the prestigious literary imprint Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Lipstein didn’t have any plans to…
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Commissioners approve mentorship program; Robert Morgan day declared
Henderson County commissioners agreed to give $50,000 to jump-start a mentoring program that would connect volunteers in the community with students at their Nov. 6 meeting. Ten percent of Henderson County youth ages 16-19 are considered disconnected, meaning they are not in school or working, Henderson County Education Foundation Executive Director Peggy Marshall said in…
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Bonk hard and start a business! 10 life lessons I learned from Jilly Cooper
Life comes at you fast when Jilly Cooper is in charge. Her latest novel, Tackle!, is published this week. If you are unfamiliar with the series, we are back in Rupert Campbell-Black’s pet-filled Cotswold idyll and he is still the most handsome man in the world (according to everyone). We can learn a lot from…
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Six Great Mystery Novels Set in Hotels
Hotels are an excellent setting for mystery novels. With so many people arriving from all different walks of life, it’s an ample backdrop to provide a variety of suspects and motives. My first two books (The Socialite’s Guide to Murder and The Socialite’s Guide to Death & Dating) are centered around a hotel heiress named…