Children's Lit Book Group

It’s awards season, in case you hadn’t noticed. We’ve already had the Golden Globes and the Grammys, the Printz, the Caldecott, and the Newbery (those last three are the American…

Do boys and girls need different books? Certainly you see them in the bookstores: books with pink covers and princesses, packaged with necklaces, in one corner, and over in another…

Christmases in my family have always involved books. The packages telegraph their contents by their solid heft and neat rectangles–even the sloppiest wrapper can make a book look good under…

I recently polled a number of friends about their “indispensable books” from childhood. Don’t we all have them, a book or two that represents safety or security, a book that…

17 years. That’s how long I’ve been a mother. It’s also how long J.K. Rowling has been living with Harry Potter. She started the series while pregnant with her first…

As a child, I wanted to be my dad when I grew up. Oh, I didn’t want to be a boy or anything — having two brothers pretty much dispelled…

Grandpop had planted a Christmas tree grove and the trees formed lanes and little rooms, circles carpeted with pine needles and hidden by thick branches. I would carry a book…

SuperBowl Sunday. We’re sitting on the couch, nine-year-old Nick between Mark and me. I’m knitting, Nick is reading; only Mark is giving his full attention to the game. At some…

My first New Year’s as a parent I was just back from the hospital with a four-day-old baby, bloated and teary and terrified. Well-trained in reading and writing as an…

“Once upon a time there was a princess.” As I recall it, that’s how all my father’s bedtime stories started. As far as I was concerned, I was that princess,…

Nick’s at it again. He’s re-reading the Harry Potter books, re-inhabiting the world of magic and Muggles. He’s staying up too late, ignoring calls to the dinner table, and generally…