Five Children and It was the first of a trilogy by E. Nesbit (1858 – 1924), followed by The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet.
In these books, readers meet Robert, Anthea, Jane, Cyril, and the baby called The Lamb.
The following description of Five Children and It is by Mary Noel Streatfeild, adapted from an introduction she wrote for Nesbit’s autobiography Long Ago When I was Young (Franklin Watts, 1966). Streatfeild herself the author of a classic children’s book series known as the “shoes” books, which began in 1936 with Ballet Shoes. Read More→
Dickey Chapelle (March 14, 1919 – November 4, 1965) was a pioneering American war correspondent and photojournalist who covered world conflicts from World War II to Vietnam.
Born Georgette Louise Meyer, she was fascinated by air travel throughout her childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She renamed herself after the explorer Admiral Richard “Dickey” Bird.
Even as a child, Georgie Lou, as she was called, marched to her own drum. She was short and nearsighted, and always quirky and precocious. From a young age, she dreamed of flying planes. She was patriotic — always saluting the flag on her way to school. “I believed I could do anything I wanted to do, and I still believe it.” Read More→
Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller is a captivating novel that illuminates one courageous, resilient, and loving pioneer woman as never before — Caroline Ingalls, “Ma” in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House books.
For over 80 years, the Little House stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder have captivated generations of audiences. Caroline: Little House, Revisited is a fresh look at the classic Little House on the Prairie, told through the eyes of Caroline “Ma” Ingalls.
In this novel, authorized by Little House Heritage Trust, Sarah Miller vividly recreates the beauty, hardship, and joys of the frontier in this dazzling work of adult historical fiction. Read More→
I first read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in the spring of 2005, while my mother-in-law recuperated in rehab from a broken leg. A year earlier she moved in with my husband Bruce and me.
It had been a difficult year, and she was soon to return. I wanted to make things easier for all of us, and was earnestly making lists of how to do that. “This time it will be different,” I told myself. And I turned back to Pride and Prejudice.
Flo Gibson narrates the Pride and Prejudice audio book. Flo (I think of her as Flo) pronounces the famous opening sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” And off we went again. She never tired of reading to me and I never tired of listening. Read More→
In the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Variations on a Theme by William James), Ursula Le Guin presents us with a utopia that turns out to include an imperfect, even nightmarish dystopia. This analysis is contributed by Sarah Wyman, professor of English at SUNY-New Paltz.
The tension between these two heaven-and-hell extremes could be summed up in a pull between the impulse to leave in the title and the joyous arrival of the festival that sets the stage.
A carefree community that seems pleasing and just, turns out to be structured on injustice and ultimately untenable for some of its citizens. Read More→
May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) born Eleanore Marie Sarton, was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Born in Belgium, her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1915 after briefly living in England.
Her mother was the English artist Mable Elwes Sarton, and her father, George Sarton, was a science historian.
Sarton began writing poetry when she was in her teens. After graduating from high school, she moved to New York City with notions of becoming an actress. She joined the New York’s Civic Repertory Theater and even tried her hand at starting and running such a venture, launching Associated Actor’s Theater in 1933. Read More→
Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 –February 19, 2016) was an American author best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).
Born in Monroeville, Alabama, she was originally named Nelle Harper Lee.
Few novels have had the cultural impact of To Kill a Mockingbird, which has sold tens of millions of copies and has been translated into more than forty languages. Lee drew from her upbringing in a small southern town to tell an indelible American story. Read More→
Betty Smith (December 15, 1896 – January 17, 1972), an American novelist and playwright, is best remembered for her evocative coming-of-age story, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Born Elizabeth Wehner, she shared a birthdate — December 15 — with the heroine of that beloved novel, Francie Nolan (though the author’s birth year was five years earlier than Francie’s).
Betty herself had a rough childhood, growing up in the tenements of Brooklyn at the dawn of the 1900s. The family moved several times before settling in a top-floor tenement on Grand Street that served as the model for the Nolan family’s flat in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Read More→
