In the 19th century, New York City’s Blackwell’s Island was conceived as the most modern and humane way to handle the poor, sick, and criminal. Instead, it was like something out of Dickens. In fact, Charles Dickens himself once visited this site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals andContinue reading
Heather Abel’s novel, The Optimistic Decade, captures a place (a summer camp in Colorado) and a time (the 1990s) with insight, wisdom, and humor. And it has captured the attention and affection of readers and reviewers, who are loving this big and bold, thoughtful and delightful debut. “A perceptive writer whose astute observations keepContinue reading
Most moms aren’t like the moms we see in movies or in chapter books from our childhood. Most moms don’t get it right every time. Most moms aren’t like, well, most moms. So, for Mother’s Day, here are five books about and for moms who live and think outside the box. The Leavers: For theContinue reading
Heather Abel, author of The Optimistic Decade—now in paperback—shares this essay about how she came to write her debut novel. • • • “Class of ’36, I guess we did something wrong.” I was in college when I first read that sentence, and its author—my grandmother—had just died. She’d been charismatic and uncompromising, equally criticalContinue reading
In honor of Earth Day on Sunday, learn a little bit about some of our creepy, crawling neighbors on Planet Earth with Amy Stewart‘s Wicked Bugs books. It’s fun for all ages — so we’re offering up one copy of Amy’s original, New York Times bestselling book, Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon’s Army &Continue reading
We treat the tides as commonplace. We send monkeys into space as simply as if we were sending flowers to our mother. We fertilize our strawberries with the bones of ancient sharks and light our bathrooms by perturbing an isotope of uranium. We carry on unwondering in a world of explicable phenomena, and in thisContinue reading