Books From Beyond The Grave

2 CommentsReading, Uncategorized, writing, , ,

One of the bargains in my newsletter of the day was a Boxcar Children Book–Legend of the Irish Castle, and just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. (Apparently, if you’re a minor, you celebrate by reading. Who knew?) I was just intrigued enough to go look the book up, since I read a lot of

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So, What is the Purpose of YA and Middle Grade?

19 CommentsUncategorized, , ,

Sometimes, you get into an argument–it was a very polite argument, by the way–and it just gnaws at you for the rest of the… Well, what is this? Thursday? Well, week, then. A Middle-Grade Writer on Twitter was grousing about Middle Grade literature making references to (things she considered to be outside a MG-er’s frame

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Throwing Away The Classics

3 CommentsNovels, Politics, , ,

I ran into this post–which talks about why not to give children a particular book– on Carol Nissenson’s Blog the other day and despite the post’s title, it took me three or four read throughs to figure out exactly which book she was talking about. The Secret Garden. One of the books I read as

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Dragon Smoke and Wind

18 CommentsShort Stories, ,

The morning the Dragons came, the cat was in a questionable mood at best. That was understandable. When he was a kitten, and Mr. and Mrs. Dragon were still very young, Mr. Dragon pulled his tail. And Mrs. Dragon set him on fire. Simultaneously. After all, he’d just fallen in the pig sty, and didn’t

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In Praise of Children’s Booksellers and Librarians

2 CommentsUncategorized,

Children confuse me. When I was a bookseller, I spent a lot of time in the Children’s Section. If I wasn’t actually in the character costume for an event, I was behind the desk, frantically searching for the by-age-and-grade-level cheat sheets the children’s specialist kept. The character costume part was easy. All you  have to

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