Eleven-year-old Nick Sixsmith and her mother, Theo, pause their itinerant lives as arborists to return to Mistwood, the home of the ancient, magical ironwood trees. Frustrated by their inability to determine the cause of a rapidly spreading blight, Theo returns to the home she abandoned before Nick’s birth to look for clues in the ancestral […]
In “Origin Story,” a piece that’s less about looking back than moving forward, the female protagonist muses: “Freedom wasn’t to be found in words but in being alone…thinking thoughts that would not appear in her stories because they were shameful in their intimacy and small in scope, the product of a lack of imagination or […]
O’Neill, a University of Southern California historian, excavates the story of two East African princes who boarded a British ship with the intention of traveling to London, only to be sold into slavery in Jamaica. After years of enslavement, the princes persuaded a lawyer to help them regain their freedom, setting up the next stage […]
In 1787, Mary Wollstonecraft is fired from her position as governess of three young women on the charge of being overly progressive; the incident is a microcosm of her uphill struggle to affect “an end to women’s blind obedience.” She returns to London to pursue her ambition to become a writer, and with the encouragement […]
“Nothing ever happens if you don’t say yes, even if…it seems like a bad idea at the time,” writes Vilanch at the end of a meandering catalog of onscreen disasters, some so improbable that it’s amazing they made it past the cutting-room floor. Take a sitcom with Charo, the cuchi-cuchi Spanish “force of nature” who […]
Alberto Salas is on a mission: to discover and document all the potatoes he can “before they’re lost for good.” The renowned Peruvian agronomist—affectionately portrayed as a rosy-cheeked, wiry-haired, squat man clad in a yellow coat—plays the game of potato paka paka (or hide-and-seek), scouring the Andes to support the development and proliferation of potatoes […]
This exuberant rhyming ode to reading is primed to get kids excited about the wonders awaiting them between the pages of a book. As the authors wisely point out, books are perfect anytime, anywhere—and they’re for everyone. Readers are encouraged to give books as gifts, to share them with friends and family, and even to […]
It’s 1988, and Ben Davidson lives with his family in Tacoma, Washington. He has a passion for creating objects out of wood; more specifically, he makes custom mailboxes that look like houses as a hobby. Ben would love to do it for a living, but he wonders how he could ever make enough money selling […]
The people of the kingdom of Glyndoria have yet to learn the shocking truth that Persephone and Azriel discovered about Mordesius’ role in the current king’s birth. Hoping to avoid execution, Azriel strikes a bargain with the Regent Mordesius: He and Princess Persephone will find the healing Pool of Genezing, which may only be the […]
“The buildings of the Sea are made of time,” Lina’s father, Wui Shin, says. “I knew that he was pulling my leg and also that he was being truthful,” she tells readers from a vantage point 50 years on. Time is mutable in Thien’s adventurous fourth novel: Helpful neighbors Bento, Blucher, and Jupiter have names […]