by Laura Vanderkam In 168 Hours, Vanderkam presents a proposal designed to help readers define their life’s “core competencies” and make better use of their time each week, all 168 hours of them. While there are many helpful and practical tips within the book’s pages, Vanderkam’s blinders to crucial considerations like economic class are surprising. […]

This week I’m pleased to feature a three-part interview with my friends Chadd VanZanten and Russ Beck, authors of On Fly-Fishing the Northern Rockies: Essays and Dubious Advice (The History Press, 2015). Chadd is a professional editor in Logan, Utah. His essays appear in the online journal Eat Sleep Fish, the anthology Utah Reflections,  and […]

by E. Lockhart “We are liars. We are beautiful and privileged. We are cracked and broken.”  We Were Liars is a young adult novel written by E. Lockhart, the author of the Ruby Oliver series and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. Set in the present day on a private island near Martha’s Vineyard, the […]

Since graduating, I have enjoyed much more free time to read and select books off of the shelves at random. This has been both rewarding and a mixed bag: I encountered new books and authors I loved and others I did not. One of the great freedoms that comes with reading for pleasure as opposed […]

Once Upon an Alphabet: Short Stories for all the Letters by Oliver Jeffers “If words make up stories, and letters make up words, then stories are made of letters. In this menagerie we have stories, made of words, made for all the letters.” In Once Upon an Alphabet Oliver Jeffers, beloved illustrator of The Day the […]

by Princesse Camcam If you’ve never enjoyed a wordless picture book before, Princesse Camcam’s gorgeous book for children is a wonderful place to start. The cut-paper illustrations in this French artist’s story are stunning and beautiful. Fox’s Garden is the story of an expectant fox looking for a warm place to give birth to her […]

I recently attended the 19th Annual Plum Creek Children’s Literacy Festival hosted by Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska. Each year the two-day festival hosts school children, school teachers, librarians, college students, scholars, and fans of children’s literature. The festival begins with one day of events for the school children followed by a one day conference […]