Children don’t read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology…. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff…. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don’t expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.
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I saw a line item in someone’s LiveJournal this morning that Madeleine L’Engle had died. Publishers Weekly had a couple of lines about it on their website today, with a comment that they only got the information at deadline, and would have a longer piece next week, and that’s all very well and good, but [...]
I haven’t been in school for years – almost decades – but in honor of most students being back at school by now, my list this week is books that involve school. Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet’s entire plot involves the reactions of her schoolmates to her spy notebook, after all. Plus, I [...]
