Leda Schubert — author, teacher, expert on children and literature — has a blog (I’m working on a friend’s Mac and so am fumbling at giving you the url here) in which she raises an important question: why is it that all picture books on Rosa Parks begin with the story that she was tired [...]

As a child a read many Dennis the Menace comics about family trips — each worse and more disastrous than the last. And it is true that when we set out on a long car ride the litany of misery from the boys, interrupted only by the duration of whatever movie we have loaded in [...]

Earlier this summer there was a new flurry of internet activity about Stonehenge — the site which I’d recently written about: http://tinyurl.com/26jresz A sophisticated survey of the terrain near the stone circle yielded another, and previously unknown, circle of something (not clear yet what stood in the postholes and pitts — timber or stone). And just this [...]

This Seems to be my week for sharing articles from the New York Times. I trust you all say this article yesterday, about summer reading http://tinyurl.com/2e448es It will be no surprise to any of you to learn that a key difference in fall performance is that between kids who read during the summer and those [...]

If any of you are planning a trip to New York make sure to put aside time to visit The High Line, http://www.thehighline.org/ I’ll explain why in a moment — and why that is a subject for a column on nonfiction for younger readers. The High Line is a stretch of old elevated railroad track that [...]