The Books We Keep Forever

Candice Ransom
A few weeks ago, I stood at the cor­ner of 37th and Madi­son Avenue in New York City and gazed long­ing­ly at the ele­gant pink mar­ble build­ing that housed J.P. Morgan’s library, now the Mor­gan Library and Muse­um. In late Jan­u­ary 2019, the Mor­gan will host the “Tolkien: Mak­er of Mid­dle-earth” exhib­it. I’m too early. I only trav­el to New York every three or four years, but I’ll come back to see this exhib­it, even if I have to crawl.… more

Fantasy Gems

Jinx
The Christ­mas present that stands out most in my mem­o­ry was giv­en to me when I was 16. We opened our presents on Christ­mas Eve. At that age, I expect­ed clothes and prac­ti­cal gifts. Some­how, my moth­er knew to give me the boxed set of The Lord of the Rings. I hadn’t read any fan­ta­sy before this. So I was curi­ous.… more

Books about Trees

A Tree is Nice
With hats off to our friends at the tree-fes­tooned Iowa Arbore­tumMin­neso­ta Land­scape Arbore­tum, Chica­go Botan­ic Gar­dens, and Oma­ha’s Lau­ritzen Gar­dens, this list is ded­i­cat­ed to arborists every­where, pro­fes­sion­al and ama­teur … you take care of an essen­tial part of our ecosys­tem. Thank you. Here’s a list of books for younger and old­er chil­dren, fic­tion and non­fic­tion.
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Is It a Classic?

Reading Ahead bubble
by Vic­ki Palmquist When I was in my twen­ties, I worked at an archi­tec­ture firm. Sev­er­al of the archi­tects were fas­ci­nat­ed by my deep con­nec­tion to children’s books. One day, one of them asked me, “Which books, being pub­lished now, will become clas­sics?” That ques­tion has stuck with me, hold­ing up a sign­post every now and then. How does one pre­dict a classic?… more

Laughter and Grief

Reading Ahead bubble
by Vic­ki Palmquist There are books we remem­ber all of our lives, even if we can’t remem­ber the details. Some­times we can’t even remem­ber the sto­ry, but we remem­ber the char­ac­ters and how they made us feel. We recall being trans­port­ed into the pages of the book, see­ing what the char­ac­ters see, hear­ing what they hear, and under­stand­ing the time and spaces and breath­ing in and out of the char­ac­ters.… more