What I’ve Been Reading
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. One of the sharpest books I’ve ever read…a feminist outcry, a simultaneous parody of Lord of the Flies and James Bond movies, a biting critique of commercialism, all punctuated by hysterical fake commercials for beauty products (“Because there’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be fixed!”).
Anyway, you really have to like a book that starts off with a planeload of teenage beauty queen contestants crash landing on a remote desert island and ends up with a profound message about growing up female in a country that’s happy to judge you on how well you can walk in high heels while wearing a swimsuit and smiling.
Read MoreGreat First Lines
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.”
–C.S. Lewis, The Dawn Treader
Read MoreWhy Kids Read
In An American Childhood, Annie Dillard lays bare what it means to read as a child and as an adolescent. It’s not necessarily what adults, particularly parents and teachers, think.
Read MoreIt was clear the adults, including our parents, approved of children who read books, but it was not at all clear why this was so. Our reading was subversive, and we knew it. Did they think we read to improve our vocabularies? Did they want us to read and not pay the least bit of heed to what we read, as they wanted us to go to Sunday school and ignore what we heard?
I was now believing books more than I believed what I saw and heard. I was reading books about the actual, historical, moral world–in which somehow I felt I was not living.
What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. I wanted strength, not tea parties. What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.
Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope. There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized. This life could be found and joined, like the Resistance. I kept this exhilarating faith alive in myself, concealed under my uniform shirt like an oblate’s ribbon; I would not be parted from it.
The Poetry of Metal
A few days ago, I slipped away from my desk to watch The Post. And loved it. Meryl Streep’s performance was a joy, sensitive and hesitant and powerful all at once; “I am speaking to Mr. Bradlee now” is one of my new favorite lines in film.
One moment stuck with me: watching the printers slot the metal type into place to run that first edition with news of the Pentagon papers. There is something so gorgeous, so solid and precise and elegant, about a page of metal type set to run, glistening with ink, all the letters reversed so that the elegant bars and curves of the font seem fresh to the eye. And then the whole building vibrating with the impact of the press, the reporter’s pencils dancing on their desks. Force of words made manifest.
Now, I love all the convenience of digital everything as much as the next writer; I love the swiftness and ease of editing when sentences and paragraphs are feather light and can be moved from here to there with the tap of a key. But I miss the sturdy beauty of real type and real ink.
Read MoreWhat I’ve Been Reading
Melissa Sweet’s exquisite biography of E.B. White, Some Writer! E. B. White would have been proud–not a word or a line out of place. “Gem” is an overused description, but we should have been saving it for this book all along, with its rich colors and tender insights into what it means to love words, and animals, and children.
Read More“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth….Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net.”
–E.B. White, via Melissa Sweet
Utopia
Helen Keller with her teacher and companion, Annie Sullivan.
“Literature is my utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the sense shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment of awkwardness.”
–Helen Keller
Curious City Besties Honors Deadly Wish!
Proud to have Deadly Wish honored as a Curious City Bestie! My tale of ninjas, monsters, friendship, and betrayal garnered a spot on the list for “Best Stalking by Giant Deadly House Cat.”
The Curious City Besties are selected by Kirsten Cappy, who knows more about kids’ books than pretty much anyone I know.
Here’s the full list–if you need books for kids on your holiday list or just appreciate a fabulously told story, this is the place to go!
Read More
Sarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews