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94.7% of kids’ books are crud
Or so said author Mac Barnett, the U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, as quoted in a May 22, 2026 article in The New York Times. The response to his criticism didn’t go well. If you want to set the world of children’s literature on fire, a few surefire ways to do it exist.… Read more
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Aftermath
Some weeks back, I posted about a book that I’d recently discovered in my local library, Vertigo by Harald Jähner. Its subject was the Weimar Republic, about the years in Germany between the First World War and the coming to power of the Nazi regime in 1933. Upon reading this fascinating book, I took note… Read more
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Simple Pleasures
I moved into my current home barely three years ago, just over the Christmas period. As a result, I’m still learning its secrets. One of those secrets is what lies under the topsoil both front and back. The backyard offers two small gardens, one an overgrown rock garden, consisting largely of beds of lily of… Read more
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Vertigo
Nothing gives me more pleasure than coming up with a post that combines two of my great passions: history and art. I wasn’t searching for Vertigo by the German journalist Harald Jähner, but came across his book in a search on another topic. Although I’ve read a great deal about the interwar period, this is… Read more
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Trouble At Th’ Mill OR Something Lost; Something Found
“Trouble At Th’ Mill” is the title of chapter 14 of a book I’m currently reading, Northerners, A History, the story of the North of England from the Ice Age to the present day (HarperCollins, HarperNorth, 2022). The expression is also the title of one of my very favourite Monty Python sketches, Trouble at The… Read more
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Sonny’s Blues
“I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn’t believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of… Read more
