Aaarrrggghhh! These days, I seem to be in the wrong place all the time. Lucky DC-area folks: Do NOT NOT NOT miss Canadian Korean graphic artist Michael Cho at SPX 2014: Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, tomorrow and Sunday, September 13 and 14, 2014. Make your...
Fall is upon us once again, and Lion is out in his garden, raking leaves, turning soil, getting ready for the winter ahead. "Oh! Poor little thing!" he notices: Bird has fallen from the sky, his wing broken. Bandaged and revived, Bird watches as his flock...
Ellen Oh, author of the acclaimed Prophecy trilogy – starring a third-century, yellow-eyed, teenage supergirl demon slayer – is channeling her own colorful fighting spirit. Two-thirds of her series, Prophecy and Warrior, are available now. King hits shelves this coming December. In the meantime, Oh herself has gone...
"Today is Mei-Mei's birthday. She is turning six years old," the first double-page spread announces. Well ...
Ellen Oh’s Prophecy Trilogy and Why #WeNeedDiverseBooks For Ellen Oh, good things seem to happen in threes. She’s the proud mother of three daughters. She’s had three careers – lawyer, professor, and finally a published writer (after 40!). The third book she wrote got her a three-book...
Here's another title you might consider choosing to stick in your ears: 1. because this, Chris Bohjalian’s latest, is read by his own daughter, Grace Experience Blewer, who he credits as "instrumental in the creation of [his protagonist's] voice," who taught him "a lot – I...
Happy, happy to Larry who's celebrating his birthday. He's not so thrilled about having "to work like a dog" – even though that's exactly what he is – to prepare for his natal fest, but he's so "very excited" that all his friends are coming. Being a native...
Let me begin with the reasons to go aural on this one: co-author Stephen J. Dubner narrates (his near-breathless energy is downright contagious), plus you get additional bonus selections (including commitment devices, banning tipping, and not-men women) at book's end from the authors' Freakonomics Radio archives during which...
Patty Takeda moves in with her mother for the two weeks before her wedding. On the third day in her old room, she's woken by the sound of the doorbell, and is alarmed to hear her mother Lucy use the word "Inspector." Just a few blocks...
It's subtitled "An ALPHABEAST of a book!" which should give you some indication that letters will be involved. Ah, but there's a catch – a simply ingenious, uniquely entertaining one at that. Ready to wordplay? "Without the A the BEAST is the BEST." I can vouch for...
Anne Frank, the world's most famous hidden child during the Holocaust, was one of 28,000 Jews in the Netherlands alone who went into hiding. She was one of 12,000 who were betrayed and didn't survive. Among the 16,000 who lived, was award-winning filmmaker and cameraman...
As in my post for Beirut’s preceding, award-winning companion title, A Game for Swallows, I find I need to start at book's end. "I remember Georges Perec!" the final image announces. Initially seeming to be unrelated to the rest of the book, the unexpected homage to the experimental...
"This is the story of a cruel mother, her daughter, and her blind son." That 'cruel' is fair warning that this is not a happily-ever-after fairy tale. It is, however, "one of the most ancient and commonly told [stories] in Inuit history," filmmaker/creator Alethea Arnaquq-Baril writes in...
What are the chances: I seem to be island-hopping this week ...
The first of a trilogy (#3 debuts next month; I'm arriving on Jar Island a little late), Burn is inarguably shocking, but it definitely sets the stage for more chills to come. Mary, who left Jar Island in 7th grade, is back in 11th completely transformed. Lillia, once...
Reflections by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud In the summer of 1995, a Vietnamese American graduate student asked me: “What about us? Why do we never see anyone like us represented anywhere?” By ‘us’ she meant young women who had grown up here in the U.S. but whose parents...
