Have you ever been at a coffee shop or in a waiting room and you see someone reading a book and the cover looks interesting and you have to try really hard not to try to figure out what the book is? Because, of course, you don’t want to be nosy.
I’m thinking about this today [...]

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Last week we had a great conversation about “comforting clothes.” Well. On the third Saturday of every month I get to go to book club, which is like slipping into the most comfortably well-worn sweater you can imagine.
No one remembers exactly when our first meeting was, but we do know it was at least [...]

Our current fourth grader, who is definitely something.
We finished The Mark of Athena (finally!—it went on forever) and are on to Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. This is in honor of our own fourth grader, Will. We’ve read the book twice already (for Andrew and Lexie) and their teachers read it to them [...]

Within seconds of the announcement that the Hunger Games movie would be released on August 18, Lexie asked if she could host a party to watch the movie. Alrighty, we said. So this past weekend Lexie and a handful of her friends gathered to channel their inner tributes and watch The Hunger Games.

“There were days when she would take an aimless ride in a rickshaw, immersing herself in the choreographed commotion of the streets, where banners in bold Chinese characters waved down through shafts of sunlight, advertising sales, silks, mah-jongg sets, live birds, ivory. She found Shanghai to be ‘a great sprawling rambling’ place filled with beautiful [...]

When I married Tim, I had a feeling he’d make a great dad. And when that little man in the photo came along, I knew it was true. Tim likes to joke that I always said I wanted to have four kids and he wanted two, so we compromised and had four. He might not [...]

Andy Selsberg (The Onion, Salon.com) has written a new book, You Are Good at Things, that celebrates our unsung gifts and talents. Like maybe you always remember people’s names or can tie a maraschino cherry stem with your tongue.
So, what’s your secret talent? I’m really good at guessing how movies will end. (Remember The Crying Game? [...]

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When I posted this the other day, Michelle, author of the wonderful blog One Ordinary Day, wrote: “What an awesome poster. My baby girl has been sitting in a nook of her favorite tree reading. Makes me so happy.”
Yes. Michelle’s simple comment pretty much sums up my entire parenting philosophy: Give them some books, [...]

A lot of my inspiration seems to be coming from Facebook these days, but when a friend shared this it made me smile. Mike Anderick created this poster for Burning Through Pages, a nonprofit organization dedicated to getting kids reading.
What would your kids look like on books these days?

A book-loving reader told me about Jane Mount, an artist who “paints portraits of people through the spines of their favorite books: the ones that changed your life, that defined who you are, that you read again and again.” Jane will paint your personal bookshelf, but she also sells prints of ready-made bookshelves that feature [...]