A Speaker for the Books

  “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” [Ray Bradbury]   September 24 through September 30 is Banned Books Week this year.  For those who are not sure what Banned Books Week is, from the American Library Association it is summarized as the following: “An…

Wildwood Has Wildwords

“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” [J. K. Rowling]   When I opened to the first page of Colin Meloy’s Wildwood, I knew an adventure was about to take place!  The first sentence alone emits so much curiosity that the reader grips the edges of the book as a…

Under a Book’s Spell

A book is a journey, and readers be warned: those who enter through these terrific tomes must be prepared for a long, sometimes emotional, sometimes stressful, but always exciting expedition.  

You’re a Reader, Harry

    “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.” [J. K. Rowling]   Finally, here we are, at my Harry Potter blog week!  Do you know how hard it has been to not write every single post on…

Lights. Camera. Read. (Part Two)

  “We have an obligation to read aloud to our children.” [Neil Gaiman]   If you are tuning in to this post, please note that this is a part two to my post on Sunday.  Please click here to catch up!   This past month I read Holes by Louis Sachar to our summer campers….

Lights. Camera. Read. (Part One)

  “There are worse crimes than burning a book.   One of them is not reading them.” [Ray Bradbury] This summer I have been working with our summer campers (ages six to twelve) on literacy.  And I don’t just mean, getting the kids to read, but providing these wonderful, imaginative, unique personalities with reading and…

In a Hole in the Ground

    “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.” [J…

A Wordless Conversation

    “Before they read words, children are reading pictures.” [David Wiesner]   They always say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  They also say “A child should read a thousand books before going to kindergarten.”  (I would like to meet this omnipresent “they” everyone is always referencing by the way.)   Let’s start…

The Invention of Dreams

  “If you are a dreamer, come in…” [Shel Silverstein]   Back in April I started this blog to give myself some sort of platform to profess my thoughts and muses about books, childhood, imagination, and reading.  Confession: this has been my first post in almost a month.  Thank you all for being so patient…

A Book for Book Lovers: A Child of Books

“I am a child of books. I come from a world of stories and upon my imagination I float.” [Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston] As a “grown-up” make-believer and reader, I spend a lot of time daydreaming.  And more often than not, in my wakeful wonders I wander into the familiar territory of the books…