Elsie Parker gets to spend eight weeks learning about important topics like the difference between sex and gender, but at school, her fifth grade classmates will get their puberty education only via a generic hourlong video in a gender-segregated class at the end of the school year. Elsie decides to fill the gap: She hangs […]
The author says that he’s long been fascinated by John Hughes’ 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago, he visited various locations shown in the film. His eagerness to understand how it was made led him first to film school and, ultimately, to interviewing much of the cast (including […]
Far too many Americans, writes Bostock, are stuck in “a toxic day-to-day grind that leaves them drained and purposeless.” Since the 1970s, corporate America, per the author, has embraced a ruthless approach to profit (epitomized by Milton Friedman’s signature essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits”) that has “led to a […]
This follow-up to Riot Act (2024) returns to 1991 and an alternate America that’s ruled by propaganda and fear. Axl is haunted by grief. It doesn’t help that Gigi, his dead friend and longtime crush, is also haunting him. After being murdered during a radical act of civil disobedience, Gigi lingers among the living—specifically inside […]
As Demers’ rhyming text suggests, love occasionally makes parents say ridiculous things: “I great big meal and tiny snack you.” It also stirs overpowering emotions (“And on each clock / My favourite minute / Is every one / That has you in it”). Some of the book’s sentiments are a bit cliched—“And every year / […]
Walking through the orchard in early summer with her parents and big white dog, Lilly spots some leafy vines spilling over the old compost heap—pumpkin “volunteers.” Dad explains, “We didn’t plant them, they sprouted from the pumpkins we threw away last fall.” Over the course of a long, hot season, Lilly plays, grooms her dog, […]
Naja and her best friend Sylda witness a shipwreck one stormy night near their jungle village of Karahvel, discovering a lone survivor: an albino woman in the throes of childbirth. The child who emerges is Rowan, who brings not joy but terror when a mysterious red crescent mark on his neck leads his mother to […]
Holly Kilgour, a former model, is newly divorced and enjoying the freedom that comes with finally living life on her own terms. Her 26-year-old son, Austin, attends medical school, and she now embraces a future in which her life is no longer centered on taking care of others. Her newfound confidence is tested when Austin […]
A four-time Emmy-nominated actress and transgender rights activist, Cox elaborates on a journey that’s been filled with joyful and challenging moments and, ultimately, liberating experiences. The book is split into three parts, each representing an era in the author’s evolution. She was raised in Mobile, Alabama, by an exasperated single mother. Even playgrounds became unsafe […]
For all the ways that writers have anatomized the 1964 Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, no one has approached it like Ahmed. An English broadcaster and the daughter of South Asian immigrants, she fell for the Beatles in 1979 at age 11 while watching videos of the band’s films. She views A Hard Day’s […]