Coming Attractions

I love it when chil­dren’s books do well in the world. I was excit­ed to join Kather­ine Pater­son at the film pre­mier of Bridge to Ter­abithia, a cou­ple of years ago, and can’t wait for The Great Gilly Hop­kins to hit the big screen. I’m all a‑tingle just think­ing about the wide release of Lois […]

Everything Old is New Again

In prepa­ra­tion for a lec­ture I was giv­ing on the use of poet­ic ele­ments to enhance prose, I dug through a few old news­pa­per and mag­a­zine arti­cles I’d writ­ten for sam­ple pas­sages in which I had done pre­cise­ly that. In the midst of my search, I came across a piece of reportage from 1977 that […]

Censorship

Ban­ning books, rip­ping them from class­room shelves, de-fac­­to cen­sor­ship at the point of publication—what the bleep is going on, here? Okay. I’ll try to calm down, but the effort required is tremen­dous. Deep breaths. Let me begin, again. When I was a lit­tle girl, I was an avid read­er. The library was my sanc­tu­ary, and story […]