march is national reading month in the United States
people of all ages are encouraged to celebrate
by daily reading or listening to books
as a way to strengthen knowledge, imagination, and empathy,
and to foster a lifelong love of reading and literature.
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‘all really good picture books are written to be read five hundred times.’
-rosemary wells
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i have always loved picture books and still collect them.
do you have a favorite?
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art credit: Grégoire Mabire, watercolor ink illustration
‘it had come about exactly the way it happened in books.’
-agatha christie
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art credit: tom gauld
erma bombeck’s writer’s conference
getting new and used books of all kinds for my birthday and christmas gifts in the last couple of months has added to my stacks, and i couldn’t be happier about seeing them grow. these thoughtful gift givers know me so well.
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‘What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
– Carl Sagan – Cosmos, Part II: The Persistence of Memory, 1980
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image credit: book riot
read.
don’t stop reading
read every book
in spite of banned books week
read every week.
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‘write what should not be forgotten.’
-Isabel Allende, Chilean-American author
Interesting note:
“When the Viennese government compiled a Catalogue of Forbidden Books in 1765, so many Austrians used it as a reading guide that the Hapsburg censors were forced to include the Catalogue itself as a forbidden book.”
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art credit: Alicia Martin, Spain-based artist’s sculptural installation at Casa de America, Madrid
walking into the very old west side book shop you never know quite what category will draw you in. this time, I was inspired by the outlaws, lawmen, gunslingers shelf. probably harkens back to my days of watching all the old westerns on Saturday afternoons with my dad.
‘the books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. she went on olden-day sailing ships with joseph conrad, she went to africa with ernest hemingway, and to india with rudyard kipling. she traveled all over the word while sitting in her little room in an english village.
-roald dahl, matilda
Situated in Albena, a sprawling Bulgarian resort on the Black Sea coast, Beach Library is the first of its kind in the European Union, and boasts over 6,000 books in more than 15 languages.
A project by German architect Herman Kompernas, the open-air library lies in front of Hotel Kaliakra and houses everything from Bulgarian literature to memoirs and works of fiction. Its 140 white shelves are made from a special material which is resistant to sun and wind, and when it rains, the bookcases are protected by a vinyl cover.
In order to make it easy for people to browse, volumes are arranged by countries, and can be borrowed for free. The only suggestion is to return the material to the library once finished.
Designed to foster reading among tourists during their summer holiday, Albena’s Beach Library is constantly expanding, as guests are encouraged to donate their own books for others to enjoy. Its goal is to provide customers with an enriching cultural exchange experience.
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‘i have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.’
― Jorge Luis Borges
In honor of National Library Week (I’ve extended it to International Library Week)
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Source Credits: Meeroona, Travel Away, Bulgarian Travel News
The Kind Wolf, by Jozef Wilson
Bunny and Tree, by Balaint Zsako
And So To Bed, by Molly Brett
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in celebration of children’s literature on world book day and every day
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‘children’s books remind us in uncertain times that there is still much we do know.
kindness matters.
laughter is essential.
caring for each other is everything.’
-The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art
whenever and wherever you need a library
look closely
you may find one in the most unlikely of places
whether deep in the woods, alongside a curb,
or myriad other places
they are all around you just waiting to be discovered.
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‘when all else fails, give up and go to a library’
-stephen king
so proud of my dear friend
breeda kelly miller
who had an idea
that grew
into her one-woman play
‘Mrs. Kelly’s Journey Home’
performed around the world
and
into a book by the same name
and
at long last
the airing of her play on *PBS this past monday.
where i had the pleasure of watching it on televsion with her
bravo, breeda kelly miller
your family would be so proud of you.
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‘we all have different gifts so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are.’
-fred rogers
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this is a reblog, as this book arrived and was promptly lost
at the detroit post office 3 years ago, and i’m hoping maybe it will arrive this year!
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as a collector of the classic golden books
i am endlessly fascinated
by their history, artwork, authors, short tales, and backstories
i finally found and ordered one i’d been looking for
“lucky mrs. ticklefeather”
which seems to have quickly made it’s way through multiple cities
only to land in detroit a few weeks ago
where is has remained
stuck in an ‘in transit’ status
ever since its arrival.
will *mrs. ticklefeather ever be found?
is she still considered lucky?
is there a rival golden book collector near me
looking for the same book?
does paul her pet puffin, have anything to do with this?
it remains to be seen and i remain hopeful
this story isn’t over yet.
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*Book summary – Rare ~~ Mrs. Ticklefeather was a very thin old lady with a good sized feather in her hat, and on her feet she had tall black shoes with plenty of buttons. She lived on the top floor of a terribly high building because the top floor is the best place for getting sunshine, and, Oh, what a good thing sunshine is for thin old ladies. When her pet puffin, Paul, goes missing, the elderly Mrs. Ticklefeather becomes very upset, but the next day Paul returns and brings with him a special gift that brings her great and unexpected happiness. Great illustrations in mid- century yet modern style.
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“hope is the last thing ever lost.”
italian proverb
I didn't have my glasses on.... 