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Among his many comments and generally bad reputation among his contemporaries in publishing (who often grumbled about what a pain he was to work with), Dahl once suggested that Hitler had a good point when he identified Jews as a problem; he branded Cinderella a dirty slut, but had no problem carrying on extramarital affairs during his time as a spy. It should be noted that this statement does not appear on the homepage of the Dahl website, nor on the blog....

The event will be livestreamed on Facebook, as well as on YouTube. To get the link, register over on EveryLibrary’s website, where you can also find out more about each of the guests in this powerhouse panel. This event is an outstanding lead up to the House hearing on book bans, slated for Thursday morning. For more ways to take action against censorship, use this toolkit for how to fight book bans and challenges, as well as this guide to identifying fake news....

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Green Lantern—at least if you’re counting from the debut of the OG Lantern Alan Scott—so it’s a good time to raise a glass in Kyle’s honor. Now, to be fair, the Green Lantern franchise is generally an extremely stylish one, although I don’t think anyone would have predicted that based on Alan’s original look: Bless your heart, old man, but this is a mess....

Or maybe it’s propaganda. That’s what it’s called when the government tries to influence the way we think, isn’t it? What’s the difference between PSAs and propaganda, anyway? As you’re reading this, you will probably have some pretty strong opinions about whether to classify a given example as one or the other. But this is something of a trick question as they are often the same thing. The prologue of Wendy Melillo’s How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America: A History of Iconic Ad Council Campaigns defines a PSA as a campaign that “use[s] commercial advertising methods to frame issues with the intention of altering public opinion, changing behavior, and motivating citizen involvement in beneficial causes” for the purpose of “solv[ing] social problems....

While we didn’t have many books on CD, we did have the giant doorstopper fantasy books we were reading in print. For my brother, it was George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords, and for me it was Brandon Sanderson’s The Well of Ascension. As we inched along in New Jersey rush hour traffic, both of us wanted to read the books we brought. However, we felt bad about the idea of one of us silently reading and screwing over whichever one of us was driving....

Though I typically enjoy being outside and messing around with my students, they’ve shown a preference for tag lately and I seriously hate running (of course, tag with me means I’m always “it”). So I turned to the school library. There’s no better place than that to interact and play with the kiddos AND avoid sweating my butt off running outside. During playtime (for Japanese elementary schools, there are usually two recess sessions: one mid-morning, and one after lunch), many kids elect to stay indoors and read or rest, and I noticed there was usually one corner of a long table crowded with a few students playing with an I Spy or similar hidden object book....

Buy one for yourself, buy one for your best friend, and then plan to buy some more for great holiday gifts this year. There’s some kind of perfect book sweatshirt for every kind of reader here. The Perfect Book Sweatshirts and Hoodies Simple but effective heart books sweatshirt. $24.90. #TeamCoolKid. $33. Do you struggle with abibliophobia? $35 for this fun hoodie. There is nothing I don’t love about this “It’s a good day to read a book” sweatshirt....

While I am far from an expert, a few years of loving and living in the poetry reading world has made me want more people to experience poetry readings. Whether you visit a brightly lit bookstore reading or a local reading in someone’s basement, you too can grow to love the poetry reading! Advice for Poetry Readings Read the Room One of the best ways to figure out the vibe of a poetry reading is to chat with people beforehand....

The shortlist of the annual Warwick Prize—which stemmed from the #WiTMonth movement—is made up of six titles translated from five different languages. One author is a Nobel laureate (Olga Tokarczuk); the others have won myriad international literary prizes. Judges for the 2019 prize are Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin, and Susan Bassnett. The prize — which grants its winners £1000 — isn’t the largest purse. But it’s a start at addressing the gender imbalance in translated literature....

Maybe you prefer the classic, homey look of a bookworm cookie jar; or you might be more of a modernist, library card serving tray type, but since we’ve all got to eat, chances are you’re in need of at least a few kitchen items. Why not combine the reading and eating and grab some of these book themed kitchen goods to have around as you slice veggies, bake cupcakes, or simply relax with a cup of tea?...

“’If you read The Giving Tree, it’s super sad. That’s like a book about unfettered capitalism and/or global warming. It’s basically like, You cannot trust human beings, they’re gonna destroy planet Earth,’ he said. ‘Or if you’ve read Where the Wild Things Are, that kid is a sociopath. He basically leaves his family to live with monsters, and he only comes back because dinner’s ready.’”Absolutely here for Hasan Minhaj doing a series of classic children’s book reviews based on what he’s reading to his kids....

“Her Body is an anthological series staging psychologically vivid tales of women’s fears and desires on landscapes of horror, fabulism, and wild-haired absurdity. It’s described as a feminist Black Mirror with fairy tale themes, its hours threaded together with a recurring ensemble of female characters.” — Carnage “The Hatchet” Machado (@carmenmmachado) October 15, 2018 A debut collection, Her Body and Other Parties, published by Graywolf Press, gained national recognition. It was “awarded the the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Bard Fiction Prize, along with the Crawford Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, Bisexual Book Award for Fiction, American Booksellers Association’s Indies Choice Book Awards and New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association’s Book of the Year....

Many of Neil Gaiman’s books offer hidden histories of ordinary places—roadside attractions, cemeteries, Tube stations, and so on. Gaiman is skilled at building worlds around, over, and through the ordinary worlds in which we live, offering not the distant escape typical of many fantasy novels but instead the promise of something fantastic, unusual, and unexpected lurking right under your nose. Under, indeed. In Neverwhere, one of his most influential works, Gaiman takes these hidden histories quite literally underground....

Now dear fellow readers, let me tell you that I eat this up. This is an adorable, lovely feature of some of my favorite genres, but I ESPECIALLY love it in romance. It’s also wonderful when an author actually does said hobby, took the time to actually research the hobby or painstakingly make it up. Yes, please give me three full pages on the mechanics of cake decorating or werewolf politics!...

How movies that are based on books are produced and released matters a lot to book fans. Movies have the power to show viewers unforgettable images that, up until that point, only existed in the readers’ imaginations. While book-to-movie adaptations are common, there is still some mystery surrounding this process. There is the author who creates the source material of course, but who else is involved? Why are some books turned into movies, while others aren’t?...

When students enter the library that I manage, I’ve become hyperaware, since interviewing Kelsey, that students can become overwhelmed by staring at what can be rows and rows of book spines. Having a library with thousands of books that reflect the lives of the student population that you serve is vitally important, yet without a librarian there to guide them it can be a confusing ordeal. There is evidence to suggest that having too much choice can be detrimental....

Given that we only get to read somewhere around 2500 books in our lives, taking stock in what’s working and what’s not is hugely beneficial. Certainly, auditing your life should happen year round, but there’s something about the closing of a year and promise of a new one that makes the opportunity feel fresh and maybe even urgent. But how to audit your reading life? Much like a financial audit, auditing your reading life means taking stock of the highs and lows of your reading within a given time frame....

What Makes a Good Banned Books Week Display? The five ideas below are easy to implement no matter what kind of space you’re working with in your organization. These would work on a traditional display, on an end cap, or even on a wall or the side of a book stack. Have accurate and current banned books on display This means your selection of books will mirror the books you have up in February for Black History Month and the books displayed in June for Pride month....

A post shared by @ thefitmamaway on Oct 31, 2016 at 7:27am PDT But really you could use rain gutter bookshelves for any collection of narrow books with gorgeous covers you want to display, like art exhibition catalogs (I have a lot of these, myself), cookbooks (ditto), or coffee table books that never managed to make it to the coffee table. And they’re perfect for tight spaces like behind a door or in a hallway....