The Yarn
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A Fuse #8 Production
by Betsy Bird
July 17, 2013 by Mark Flowers
Why do some words have more power than others? Today we look at two very different ways of looking at that crucial question. The first, Melissa Mohr’s Holy Shit, is an earnest, well-researched history of the most powerful words in the English language: curse words. Some people (for example, me) have tried to claim that […]
July 15, 2013 by Mark Flowers
And speaking of Alex Award winners, today we have two more reviews of novels by previous winners. Neil Gaiman is one of those magical writers who seems to be able to write for any age level, with a Newbery Award under his belt, popular graphic novels for teens and adults, and two Alex Award winning […]
July 10, 2013 by Mark Flowers
In just two weeks, Manchester, UK will be hosting the 11th annual International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), an international competition for high school students to show off their skills in linguistic puzzles. The puzzles require no knowledge of specific languages, and sometimes use invented languages. Instead, the teens use logic and their general linguistic knowledge. Here’s […]
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July 8, 2013 by Mark Flowers
As I sat at home last weekend, not going to ALA and the Alex Awards Program, I started thinking about how many books by former Alex Award winners we’ve looked at this year. In my head, it seemed like a lot, but I thought I should actually crunch the numbers. So, here they are, for […]
July 4, 2013 by Angela Carstensen
On the Sunday morning of ALA, I attended the 2013 Alex Awards program. Three of the ten winning authors spoke – Derf Backderf, My Friend Dahmer Julianna Baggott, Pure Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore Each author spoke for 10 minutes, followed by Q&A with the audience and a signing, with the books donated by […]
July 1, 2013 by Mark Flowers
Before I began writing this post, I always believed that the famous retort to the question of why one would climb Mount Everest–“Because it’s there”–had been spoken by Edmund Hillary, the first Westerner to ascend to the peak. But in fact, they were the words of George Mallory, the first of three real life figures […]
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