Okay, so magazines get lots of letters, and all of them are crazy. Point conceded. I sometimes take a read through the letters at Harper’s, and those few that aren’t from geriatric Canadian socialists are definitely from nutjobs. And prisoners. Not to mention a few demonstrably dangerous people. But at least they’re all real. That …
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Joining the Really Clean Plate Club
At the very beginning of Elena Gorokhova’s remarkable new memoir A Mountain of Crumbs (which, at the risk of repeating one of its blurbs, really is like an Angela’s Ashes for the Soviet era, all beautiful and evocative and worth your attention), Gorokhova swiftly sums up the provincial baseness of her mother’s people by saying …
Q&A: Bill Martin, Bill Martin, What Do You See?
When the Texas state Board of Education last week banned Brown Bear, Brown Bear, the beloved (if slightly repetitive) children’s book written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle, most of us said: WTF? It soon became clear that a Board of Ed member had done a cursory Google search and discovered a …
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Playdates: Your Place or Mine?
Playdates have been foremost on my JP agenda of late. He’s three and a half, which means the parallel play phase has generally faded. He’s ready for buddies. It’s a good thing for him socially, I think, and given his hyperdrive-level need for physical activity, letting him duke it out with the neighborhood children (in …