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Sarah Ferone is a freelance illustrator based in Philadelphia. Sarah Ferone’s background in painting and art history, and experience in designing for advertising has allowed her to develop a distinct, individual style. In addition to editorial, Sarah Ferone also works on packaging and books. Her work often has deep narrative and a beautiful handmade feel.

If you’d like to see more of Sarah Ferone’s work, please visit her portfolio.

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I am one of the teachers for our 6-8th grade Sunday School class. I love those kiddos and all the questions they ask. They make me think. Today, we discussed the fact that Abram was told by God to leave his country, and to leave his father’s family. God said He would lead Abram to…

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By Sarah Damaske

October was National Work-Family Month and, while we have a ways to go to making work-family balance a reality for all, I also think that we have a lot to celebrate. Women’s portion of the labor force hit an all-time high in the last decade and it remains at historically high levels today. And women’s employment has helped to bolster families in these hard economic times.

One of the reasons that Sarah Jessica Parker movie, I Don’t Know How She Does It, didn’t make it at the box office is that the story is less relevant than it was ten years ago when the book came out. While women (and, increasingly, men) certainly feel the strains of balancing work and family, they are also much more likely to be “doing it” these days — nearly three quarters of mothers with children under 18 work today.

I recently conducted eighty interviews with women living in New York City to investigate how they made decisions about work and family and what I found may surprise you. Nearly half of the women I met worked steadily full-time through their 20s and 30s, prime child-bearing and rearing years (and the majority of these women also found time to have children). Another 16 percent worked part-time after having kids and another quarter wanted to find stable full-time work, but struggled to do so. Only ten percent of my sample left work immediately after having children.

Women who stayed employed full-time found work provided unexpected benefits for their families. Women are now gaining higher education rates than men, so while they were rarely paid as well as their spouses, women often were in jobs that had better social networks. I met teachers, administrators and secretaries who were married to firefighters, mechanics, and prison guards. These women explained that their jobs helped them gain access to opportunities, like internships and information about good colleges, that their husband’s jobs couldn’t give them.

Women who worked steadily also felt more financially secure than their peers and could provide for families when times got tough. One of my respondents explained to me that even the best laid plans could go awry — husbands could be fired or fall ill — and continued work guarded against the unexpected.

While women are working more, there remains considerable diversity in their work-family experiences. Those of us championing Work-Family Month should recognize that this diversity demands a range of policy recommendations. Better family leave and sick day policies, as well as increased workplace flexibility, would benefit the women who stayed employed full-time. An increase in the minimum wage and universal daycare would most benefit the low-income women who wanted to work full-time but struggled to remain employed. Workplace policies that allow job-sharing or temporary part-time employment would accommodate the needs of mothers and father with young children. And re-entry programs and a stronger safety net would benefit those mothers who want to remain at home while their children are young.

My respondent, Virginia, put it best: “We all work and strive, because everyone wants the best for their kids.” If we take her words to heart, we can find the political will to implement these policies that will benefit our nation’s children and their families.

Sarah Damaske is an assistant professor of Labor Studies & Employment Relations and Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University and author of For the Family? How Class and Gender Shape Women’s Work.

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The rgz Street Team is a group of teens who bring YA reviews to our blog, led by Postergirl Miss Erin. Find out more.

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The rgz Street Team is a group of teens who bring YA reviews to our blog, led by Postergirl Miss Erin. Find out more.

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The rgz Street Team is a group of teens who bring YA reviews to our blog, led by Postergirl Miss Erin. Find out more.

Today, Sarah reviews The Sweetness of Salt by Cecilia Galante:

From the publisher: Julia just graduated as her high school valedictorian, has a full ride to college in the fall and a coveted summer internship clerking for a federal judge. But when her older sister, Sophie, shows up at the graduation determined to reveal some long buried secrets, Julia's carefully constructed plans come to a halt. Instead of the summer she had painstakingly laid out, Julia follows Sophie back to Vermont, where Sophie is opening a bakery—and struggling with some secrets of her own. What follows is a summer of revelations—some heartwarming, some heartbreaking, and all slowly pointing Julia toward a new understanding of both herself and of the sister she never really knew.

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The rgz Street Team is a group of teens who bring YA reviews to our blog, led by Postergirl Miss Erin. Find out more.

Today, Sarah reviews Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken:

"I loved [the main character] Sydelle. She was such a strong character and full of so much life. Her strong voice made the story more enjoyable as does her hope. I also loved North. He was so strong and sweet at times, other times he was a complete jerk and I was never sure of his motives. The relationship between them developed really quickly and seemed unrealistic at times, but if you were traveling with someone like they were, you might do that too.

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The rgz Street Team is a group of teens who bring YA reviews to our blog, led by Postergirl Miss Erin. Find out more.

Today, Sarah reviews last week's featured title, Positively by Courtney Sheinmel:

"When I got sick the first thing that they tested me for was HIV, and I was so afraid that I got it somehow. I didn't have it, but my disease is caused by the immune system. Even though our diseases are very different, I could totally relate to [Positively's main character] Emmy. I know that if I have 100% lung function by the time I am 40 or if my liver doesn't stop from the pills, I am lucky, and Emmy is faced with that too in other ways. There are days that I want to just throw my pills out or not get shots anymore, but I know that decision is a choice between life and death. When I first got sick, I went to a camp for teens with Primary Immunodeficiency and it was similar to what Emmy experienced at Camp Positive. Some of the friends from that time are dead, but they are far from forgotten. The part about the balloons really got to me, because that it what we do every year on my sister's birthday.

"The plot is real, because you are constantly reminded how hard life can be for some people. This book is really original, because it leaves you with so much hope. Shienmel is a fantastic writer. I loved that this is based by her experience from with working The Elizabeth Glaser AIDS Foundation and is really accurate and realistic. I highly suggest that you read this book, it is a story of a girl with so much strength." --Sarah

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The rgz Street Team is a group of teens who bring YA reviews to our blog, led by Postergirl Miss Erin. Find out more.

Today, Sarah reviews Falling in Love with English Boys by Melissa Jensen:

"I love anything that has to do with England, so I was so excited to hear about this book. I mean, English boys are always full of win.

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Inkymole, aka Sarah J Coleman, arrived at a full-time career in illustration and typography via the traditional method of a degree, and the bizarre worlds of pirate radio, lecturing, youth work, theatre, prop making for The Royal Shakespeare Co., and typesetting obituaries.

Now into her second decade of creating magic for a broad client base, she has held solo exhibitions all over the world.

Inspired by the penmanship of a more elegant era and with a muscular, if pedantic, grasp of the English language, she has wrapped her perma-stained fingers around words and pictures for advertising, identities, packaging, record sleeves and has just completed her 115th book cover.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he reflects on Sarah Palin’s resignation. See his previous OUPblogs here.

People love to hate Sarah Palin. I thought she was trouble on the McCain ticket, trouble for feminism, and trouble for the future of the Republican party, but I am troubled at the feeding frenzy that has continued despite Palin’s express desire and efforts to bow out of the negative politics that has consumed her governorship.

The speculation about what exactly Palin is up to is itself revealing - for it comes attached to one of two possible postulations - neither of which are charitable. Either Palin is up to no good, or she is completely out of her mind. Even in surrender Palin is hounded. Either she is so despicable that post-political-humous hate is both valid and necessary or she is so dangerous that she must be defeated beyond defeat.

Even Governor Mark Sanford got a day or two of sympathy from his political opponents before he admitted to other extra-marital dalliances and referred to his Argentinian belle as his “soul-mate.” Sarah Palin was accorded no such reprieve. Yes, I think gender is entirely relevant here.

Feminist scholars have studied the double-bind of woman political leaders for a while now. Women leaders are faced with a dilemma a still-patriachical political world imposes on them: women must either trade their likeability in return for male respect; or they preserve their likeability but lose men’s respect for them in exchange. When it comes to women in positions of political power in the world that we know, they cannot be both likeable and respected. Unlike men, they cannot have their cake and eat it as well. This is not the world I like, but it is the world I see.

Let me draw an unlikely parallel to make the point. People love to hate another woman that we saw a lot of in 2008 - Hillary Clinton. Like Palin, she was to her detractors the she-devil to whom evil intentions were automatically assigned for every action. But unlike Palin, she was respected and feared - she was everything Sarah Palin was not. What Palin lacked in terms of likeability she possessed in terms of respect (or at least reverent fear). No one underestimated Hillary Clinton, no one doubted her ambition. And of course, as Barack Obama put it in one of their debates, she was only “likeable enough.” Clinton was respected as a force to be reckoned with, but she paid her dues in terms of likeability. Just like the Virgin Queen and the Iron Lady, she could only be respected if she surrendered her congeniality.

Palin stands at the other end of the double-bind. Where Palin was in need of respect she gained in terms of likeability. She was the pretty beauty queen loved and beloved by her base, unapologetically espousing a “lip-stick” feminism (in contrast to a grouchy liberal feminism). But what she enjoyed in terms of likeability she lost in terms of respect. If there was one thing her detractors have done consistently, it has been to mock her. She was the running joke on Saturday Night Life, and now, a laughing stock even amongst some Republicans who see her as a quitter and a thin-skinned political lightweight. Strangely enough, Sarah Palin is Hillary Clinton’s alter-ego. Where Clinton is perceived as strong, Palin is seen as weak; whereas Clinton turns off (a certain sort of) men, Palin titillates them.

If we lived in a post-feminist, gender-neutral world, the two most prominent women in American politics, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, would not so perfectly occupy the antipodal caricatures of women trapped in the double-bind of our patriachical politics. That they each face one cruel end of the double binds tells us that the two women on opposite ends of the political spectrum sit in the same patriachical boat. So the next time liberals mock Sarah Palin, they should remember that they are doing no more service to feminism than when some conservatives made fun of Hillary Clinton’s femininity allegedly subverted by her pant-suits.

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Sarah Russo, Associate Director, Publicity, [email protected], http://twitter.com/sarahrusso

Years ago, I started my career in publicity as an assistant at Alfred A. Knopf. It was the ultimate place to learn about books, authors, the publishing industry, the “right” way to do things in the publicity world, the civilized way.

Every day started for me at 7:30am, cup of coffee in hand, the other assistant and I divided the morning papers and got to reading: The New York Times, Washington Post, Daily News, New York Post, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, and several other big dailies. We read them all, devoured them is more like it, searching for mentions of Knopf books—clipping, pasting, photocopying; putting together the “clips packet,” arts & crafts for the publicity set—to circulate to sales, marketing, editorial, and the rest of the publicity department. Yes, there were that many mentions of Knopf books each day. The packet was huge, thirty, forty pages on most days, far more on Mondays when we received the Sunday papers from around the country.

The office was a rotating cast of celebrity authors and poets. Michael Crichton, V.S. Naipaul, Toni Morrison, Eli Wiesel, and celebrity editors: Ash Green, Gary Fisketjon, Deb Garrison, Judith Jones. If you don’t know Judith Jones’s name it’s only because she is the personification of a true editor: the person behind the scenes, never flashy, never usurping the true performers—the writers—she just made the books better. But you do know her work. She discovered Julia Child, and there is a story that’s told at Knopf that she is the person who discovered The Diary of Anne Frank in the slush pile as an assistant at HarperCollins Paris. She was, of course, John Updike’s editor. And their friendship was palpable.

One afternoon, I had the chance to spend the day in Judith’s office, overlooking the East River (as Knopf was then at 201 East 50th Street) with John Updike. As a publicity assistant part of my job was to help authors sign their books when they came in to the office. When they are being asked to sign 300 copies for the sales force having someone un-boxing books, opening them to the title page and packing them back up is a necessity. My job for the afternoon was to help and make polite conversation.

Learning to talk to famous people as a terribly shy, 22 year old was a painful process for me but Mr. Updike was a kind, generous person and full of conversation. And we had one thing in common: we’re both Dutch (or I am at least partly so). So we had the Netherlands to chat about. And as we were talking about Holland, Sijthoffs and Updikes, plugging through 300 copies of Gertrude & Claudius, a rainbow appeared over the East River. Truly, a rainbow. Utterly bucolic over the dingy buildings on the waterfront of Queens. And we just stood there, staring out the window, silent, surprised and smiling.

John Updike was a good man: an incredible writer, kind to the least important of publicity personnel, and a lover of words and the world. He will be missed.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he reflects on last week’s vice-presidential debate. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

Obama supporters were surprised that Sarah Palin didn’t trip up in her debate with Joe Biden; but they nevertheless thought that she was incoherent through most of it. Palin’s supporters were thrilled that she came back after multiple setbacks with her interviews with Katie Couric with a slam dunk. We have become so divided as a nation that we can’t even agree on which is night and which is day.

The reason, I think, is because Sarah Palin did not answer Gwen Ifill’s questions. When a student refuses to take a test, we cannot meaningfully compare her performance with another.

Right at the outset of the debate, Palin announced her contempt for the debate format: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.” Palin’s opponents cried foul, but her supporters applauded her contempt of the media and Washington’s rules.

Here was Gwen Ifill’s first question: “The House of Representatives this week passed a bill, a big bailout bill … was this the worst of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out?”

This was Palin’s first non-answer: “You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, “How are you feeling about the economy?”

Biden did a classic debate pivot, but he did try to answer the question, saying “I think it’s neither the best or worst of Washington, but it’s evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we’ve ever had.”

Consider Ifil’s third question: “Governor, please if you want to respond to what he (Biden) said about Sen. McCain’s comments about health care?” and Palin’s petulant non-reply “I would like to respond about the tax increases.”

Or Ifill’s seventh question: “What promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you’re not going to be able to keep?” Sarah Palin tried her hand at the pivot trick too: “I want to go back to the energy plan, though, because this is — this is an important one that Barack Obama, he voted for in ‘05.” By pivot I mean, tangent.

In her closing statement, Palin again made clear where her priorities were. “I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard. I’d rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did.” Speak to the American people she did, but answer these tough questions she did not.

We should stop pretending that debates really happen in American politics; even the four organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates no longer qualify. Masquerading for debate, all we get are solipsistic televised addresses delivered to us in alternating segments. Last Thursday, Gwen Ifill was little more than a two-minute time keeper with no control of how Biden and especially Palin used their time.

Let us remember why we care for debates. Because meaningful exchanges between alternative voices stand at the heart of democracy. By controlling for question, we can see how candidates measure up to each other substantively. Instead, American politics today is deluged by speeches and not debates, asymmetric communications in which politicians talk past each other rather than to each other.

Avoiding the questions and eschewing a debate may be good for a candidate but it is bad for democracy. And we should not allow Sarah Palin or any other candidate to tell us that democracy is only about connecting with people and not also debating the issues. Only demagogues insist on trading directly with the people without the watchful eye - Palin calls it the “filter” - of the media or a dissenting interlocutor. Democracy is best served by reciprocity and deliberation, not one-sided assertions to one’s base with no follow-up questions.

While Palin connected last Thursday, she hardly debated. As supporter Michelle Malkin revealingly put it: “She was warm, fresh, funny, confident, energetic, personable, relentless, and on message.” Seven ayes for style, an aye for substance, and nay to debate. The nays have it.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he Palin’s nomination. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

John McCain’s campaign has turned a 7 point deficit into a 4 point lead according to the new USA Today/Gallup poll. This post-convention bump did not come from McCain’s acceptance speech, which only received an “excellent” rating from 15% of those polled, compared to the 35% Obama received. The bump came from Sarah Palin. Here is the poll’s most important result: before the convention, Republicans by 47%-39% were less enthusiastic than usual about voting. Now, they are more enthusiastic by 60%-19%.

The new McCain campaign message is that change is about reforming Washington, aided in no small part by a Number 2 that has developed/created quite a reputation for reform. This new configuration appears to be overshadowing Obama’s definition that change requires a change in party control of the White House, because it has tapped into the anti-Washington sentiment felt among the Republican base.

Palin is running not as the back-up plan (as most vp candidates have), but as right-hand woman, and this is why Barack Obama took the risk of appearing unpresidential today by attacking Sara Palin directly himself. But Obama’s response - “You can’t just make stuff up” - sounded like a petulant kid crying foul rather than an effective counter-punch. As the campaign fumbles for a working riposte, it will become clear that the answer was always right before their eyes. By an ironic twist of fate, Hillary Clinton, though unsuccessful in her own presidential bid, has become the queen and kingmaker. Sarah Palin would not have risen from political obscurity into national prominence but for the schism generated by Clinton’s candidacy within the Democratic party. Yet Joe Biden cannot perform the role of attack dog as viscerally as he would if Palin were a man, and so ironically, Clinton will have to be dispatched to play this traditionally vice-presidential role. The question is whether the media will give Clinton the time of day now that the primary season is decidedly over.

Safe for the October surprise still to be discovered, the tectonics of the match-up are now mostly settled. With the VPs now selected, two previously toss-up states have moved into the “leaning” category: PA has moved in Obama’s direction because of Biden, and MO has moved in McCain’s direction because of Palin. The only vice-presidential debate sceduled on Oct 2 will be more critical than the first of three presidential debates on September 26. There’s been a lot of talk of Gallup polls conducted immediately after the conventions only getting it right fifty percent of the time, but less acknowledged is the fact that by the first week of October - the week the vp candidates shall debate - these polls have gotten it right almost every time since 1952. On October 2, Biden and Palin will have their one chance to get it right for their respective campaigns.

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This is what happens when author/illustrators get their own friggin' blogs. Oh sure, they're all cute and cuddly at first. Then they start to grow up and post information that, quite frankly, YOU should have thought of in the first place. Take as your example Mr. Mo Willems' posting, I'm Off. Don't let its title mislead you. He isn't off in the least. In fact, he's touting about information regarding the Ezra Jack Keats Contest here in NYC. Basically, kids create their own picture books and the winners get people like Mo Willems to present to them their awards.

At this moment the Donnell Central Children's Room has all the books, winners and otherwise, up for viewing until April 30th.

Why check it out? Partly because some of the books are scary-good. And partly because these are some of the titles of the others:

• World Famous Hector - Could have gone with any name. Went with "Hector".
  
• When Snowflakes Stop! - We would have also accepted "When Snowflakes Go Bad".
  
• This Boy is Not Too Bad - I'm loving the correct usage of the word "too".
  
• Steak Tree - Mmmm. Steak tree.
  
• Never Apologize for Your Art - Which bears a Jackson Pollock lookalike on the cover. And my personal favorite . . .
  
• Poor Ugly Devil - Exactly what it sounds like.
  

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