Playing detective is one of the cornerstones of make-pretend. Peering at things with magnifying glasses, doodling sketches of your neighbor’s dog because he’s a ‘suspect’, and wearing Sherlock hats even though it’s 80 degrees out are all in a young kid’s repertoire. It’s really a shame none of us ever stopped to think, ‘Hey, maybe this could be a real job!’ There’s one girl, however, who did take her detective-fantasy to the next level. Hilde Lysiak is unlike any kid – or aspiring journalist – we’ve seen. At eight years old, she founded and began writing Orange Street News, the only monthly print …
J.R.R. Tolkien served as a lieutenant during World War I. Thrust from his contented life as a newlywed and recent college graduate, he was conscripted to serve as a fighter in the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The battles left him emaciated and shellshocked, a small fortune by comparison – as he later wrote, “by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead”. The war, and how it haunted Tolkien thereafter, has an almost-mythological meaning to Middle-earth fans. The Fall of Gondolin, the first story set inside the fantasy universe, was written while Tolkien was …
What do you do when you don’t know something? You look it up – and if you’re like us, that includes visiting a library. But what if you don’t know someone, or want to know a life experience? For that, you might want to consult a librarian at a Human Library. At a Human Library, visitors hear stories from and pose questions to people of unqiue experiences. The ‘books’ are people, their stories ranging from the subtle (different faith or orientation) to the drastic (refugee or victim of relationship violence). As a borrower, you are encouraged to challenge yourself and engage …
Imagine: you’re writing a children’s book, ready to pour your wisdom, creativity, and a bit of your inner child into your adolescent opus. The main character is strong, the message is there, but wait…where’s the coolest place for your kiddie readers to see in your book? We know that New York is the ‘it city‘ for children’s book locations, but there are thousands of locales – how are you going to narrow it down? This quiz is here to help!
News flash: you don’t like mythology as much as Neil Gaiman. It simply cannot be done: his 2001 novel American Gods is directly about deities gallivanting around on Earth, and Stardust and The Sandman have allusions to fantastical fairy peppered throughout them. He’s the guy you want at bar trivia night when a question over which god caused which misfortune on humanity. Now Gaiman, apparently on a hot streak after The View from the Cheap Seats, is once again flexing his non-fiction muscles in a new book on Norse mythology. The “almost novelistic retelling of famous myths”, titled – get this – Norse Mythology, will play …
