And the People Stayed Home

And the People Stayed Home
Per­haps you saw it. On social media, or in a chain email. A poem that seemed like a hope­ful sigh went out into the world very ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic last spring and made its rounds as quick­ly as the virus. And the peo­ple stayed home.
And they lis­tened, and read books,
and rest­ed, and exer­cised, and made art,
and played games, and learned new ways of being,
and were still….
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Outstanding Short Biography Collections

Girls Think of Everything
You know the young read­ers, and striv­ing read­ers, who will love all three of these books. They’re a col­lec­tion of biogra­phies, two of the books focused on women, and one of the books choos­ing among chil­dren across the cen­turies and around the world. Whether you’re look­ing for your home book­shelves or your library’s these three books are high­ly recommended.… more

If Da Vinci Painted a Dinosaur

If Da Vinci Painted a Dinosaur
At once ridicu­lous and sub­lime, If da Vin­ci Paint­ed a Dinosaur is mag­net­ic. Which dinosaur will be fea­tured in whose paint­ing? Quick, turn the page! Amy New­bold, author, and Greg New­bold, illus­tra­tor, fol­low up If Picas­so Paint­ed a Snow­man with this vol­ume com­bin­ing a herd of his­toric and imag­i­nary dinosaurs includ­ed in 19 famous artists’ famil­iar paint­ings: Degas’ bal­leri­nas as dinosaurs en pointe in pink tutus, the immense claw of a Gigan­tosaurus for Edvard Munch’s Scream, and sev­en types of dinosaurs play­ing jazz in an Aaron Dou­glas paint­ing (so appeal­ing).… more

With My Hands

Some­times, a book comes across my desk that sparkles like a gem, attract­ing my atten­tion, insist­ing that I stop what I’m doing and read it. This hap­pened when With My Hands: Poems about Mak­ing Things arrived last week. I thought I’d take a peek. Next thing you know, I was clos­ing the last page of the book, sigh­ing with con­tent­ment. And then I knew I had to read the book all over again.… more

The Secret Kingdom

The Secret Kingdom
This book is irre­sistible. For all kinds of reasons. Remem­ber when you were a kid, or maybe you do this now, how you’d take what­ev­er was at hand and cre­ate a house, a camp, an entire set­ting for you to play in? Where you could act out your sto­ries? Did you do this with found items from nature? Or things your fam­i­ly was throw­ing away?… more

Welcome to Roy’s House

Roy's House
What bet­ter way to famil­iar­ize one’s self with the work of pop cul­ture artist Roy Licht­en­stein than to walk through his house from liv­ing room to snack bar, from bath­room to bed­room, and final­ly into his stu­dio, where we can try our hand at painting? Susan Gold­man Rubin and her team at Chron­i­cle have cre­at­ed a book illus­trat­ed by Roy Lichtenstein’s paint­ings, Roy’s House, which lets us see up close his style of art, the col­ors he used, and the tech­nique of shad­ing col­or in dots.… more

Roads Not Taken

Lisa Bullard
My brother’s dri­ving direc­tions are full of “roads not taken.” He’ll say some­thing like, “Go about a mile and you’ll see Hamil­ton. Don’t turn there! You want the next street.” But with­out fail, I see Hamil­ton, remem­ber that it was part of his direc­tions, and turn before I’m sup­posed to. My father and I are equal­ly direc­tion­al­ly incom­pat­i­ble. He’ll recite a mys­ti­fy­ing suc­ces­sion of com­pass points to me.… more

Collecting your observations

Welcome to New Zealand
by Vic­ki Palmquist I nev­er kept a jour­nal. Why? It nev­er occurred to me. It wasn’t with­in my realm of famil­iar­i­ty. I start­ed writ­ing many sto­ries on note­book paper and stuffed them into fold­ers. But how sat­is­fy­ing to have a jour­nal, specif­i­cal­ly an obser­va­tion jour­nal to keep track of what you see, hear, and think. As a child, I was a hunter-gath­er­er. Were you?… more

Literary Madeleine: The Horse

madeleines
I am not a horse person. Oh, I survived a week at Girl Scout riding camp and years later when I was on the staff at a Y camp I enjoyed helping bridle and saddle horses for the early morning trail riders. But I’ve never been truly comfortable riding or, maybe especially...