Fifty years ago this March, Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, published The Cat in the Hat. The little volume revolutionized children’s book publishing with its inventive silliness yet kid-appropriate vocabulary. In honor of the event, the National Education Association is sponsoring a nationwide Read-Aloud of The Cat in the Hat on March 2 as […]
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series, will hit the shelves at midnight, July 21, 2007. Amazon is already taking preorders, if you’d rather not risk getting trampled at your local bookstore. I think this gives me just enough time to reread the first six. Anyone with me? I could
My second column for Bay Windows, Of Dinosaurs and Monsters, is now online. If you live in Massachusetts, you can also find a paper copy, suitable for reading on the T, in the doctor’s office, or whenever your cable modem goes out.
We’ve been reading a lot of books about snow here at the house of Mombian, perhaps in hopes of coaxing something sleddable out of our unusually mild winter. Since today also marks the start of Black History Month, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. Keats himself
I’ve always been fond of Groundhog Day. Maybe because it’s an underdog (-hog?) of a U. S. holiday, its February 2nd date following the noble Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and preceding the excessively commercial Valentine’s Day. It also seems to hearken back to a time when people paid more attention to natural signs (right
This coming Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the U. S. His work and the movement he led represent values that resonate with many of us, regardless of race. I thought it would be appropriate to honor the holiday by showcasing a number of books for young children about Dr. King. What
My son’s latest favorite read is Wild About Books, by Judy Sierra. It’s the cheerful, rhyming tale of a librarian who accidentally drives her bookmobile into the zoo. The animals discover the fun of reading, and the zoo is never the same. Marc Brown, author of the popular Arthur series, illustrated the book, but you’d
Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has revealed the title of her seventh and presumed final Harry Potter novel. She’s buried the answer at jkrowling.com, where you can click several “secret” links and solve a hangman puzzle to find the answer. (Yahoo! News has the solution, as well as the title, if you don’t want
Just in time for the holidays, I’m relaunching an updated Mombian Shop, chock full of books, music, videos, toys, baby gear, and lots of things for house and home. You’ll find items geared towards children of same-sex parents and items celebrating lesbian culture, but also more general categories of products. We’re a diverse lot, really,
A trashy lesbian romance? A dark allegory about modern life? A young-adult mystery? If you think you have it in you, give it a try during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), in which participants attempt to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel between November 1 and November 30. The object is not necessarily to produce a
