The Blank on Blank organization has created an animated video starring radio personality and writer Garrison Keillor. The video embedded above features a recording made during a 92Y event where he sat for a conversation with The Paris Review editor George Plimpton.
During this discussion, Keillor shared his thoughts on humor and storytelling. In the past, the producers behind this YouTube channel have made pieces with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings memoirist Maya Angelou, Fahrenheit 451 novelist Ray Bradbury, and Where the Wild Things Are creator Maurice Sendak.
Happy National Poetry Month! All throughout April, we spoke with poets about working in this digital age. Recently, we spoke with writer Christine Heppermann.
Heppermann (pictured, via) worked as a columnist and reviewer for The Horn Book from 1996 until 2013. In addition to poetry, she also writes nonfiction and fiction for young readers. Check out the highlights from our interview below…
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Today’s guest book review and Dads Reading Featured Post is from a good friend of Book Dads, Kevin Westerman. Kevin has a blog (Super Daddy) where he relates stories about being a stay at home dad and spending time with his two children.
In this guest book review and Dads Reading Featured Post, Kevin writes about one of his favorite books to read with his daughter, Daddy’s Girl by Garrison Keillor.
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Book Review
Daddy’s Girl by Garrison Keillor, Robin Preiss Glasser (Illustrator)
Reviewed by: Kevin Westerman
About the Author:
Garrison Keillor is the author of thirteen books, including Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, Wobegon Boy, and Lake Wobegon Days. From 1999-2001, Keillor wrote a column “Dear Mr. Blue: Advice for Lovers and Writers” on Salon.com. Keillor’s popular Saturday-night public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, is in its twenty-seventh season. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and daughter.
About the Illustrator:
Robin Priess Glazer is the number one New York Times bestselling illustrator of the Fancy Nancy series, written by Jane O’Connor; America: A Patriotic Primer, A is for Abigail, and Our Fifty States by Lynne Cheney and most recently Tea for Ruby by Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. She lives in Southern California with her family.
About the book:
Beloved Prairie Home Companion radio star and bestselling author Garrison Keillor offers a touching picture book tribute to the strong bond between daddy and daughter. A reassuring bedtime story that the entire family will understand and appreciate.
My take on the book:
I got this book for my daughter when she was ten months old, she is now four years old and we still read Daddy’s Girl at least once a week.
The four stories are a narrative from the Dad’s perspective of the time he spends with his daughter. Each story tells a different part of their day together, from changing of the little girl’s diaper to her favorite food, a stroll through the city and dancing together and having fun.
The last story, “Won’t You Dance with Me?”, is the most heartfelt of the four stories. The father and daughter are at a wedding reception and they are dancing together. At the end of the story he says:
“Oh, baby, won’t you dance w
I doubt I would have been so ticked off at Garrison Keillor’s death-of-publishing op-ed this morning if a friend hadn’t called yesterday to tell me how insulted she was by similar comments he made at a recent Authors Guild gala, but seeing newspapers endorse this sort of twaddle does get tiresome.
Judy Berman invited me to elaborate on my Twitter comments, and you can read my and others’ responses to Keillor’s article over at Flavorwire.
See also Douglas Adams’ 1999 essay “How to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet” (“anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really”).
posted by Neil
The editor at CBS Sunday Morning asked if I had any photos of my son Mike back at the period when I first had the idea for
The Graveyard Book - late 1985. I looked. We really didn't have any. I wandered next door and asked Mary (his mum, my former wife and for these last five years my friend and next-door neighbour) if she had any photos from back then. "No," she said. Then, "Do you mean those transparencies? I have them in an envelope somewhere." She vanished and came back with a large manila envelope from a long time ago. "Here."
Half a lifetime ago -- literally -- I was nearly 25, and working for magazines. Henry Fikret, who photographed a lot of the interviews I did, volunteered to take some photos of me and my family, and he did.A week later the envelope arrived, and I realised that everything he shot was on colour transparencies -- like huge slides -- and I was never sure what do with them, other than being fairly sure I couldn't take them down to Boots the Chemist and have prints knocked out. So they stayed in their envelope, and they kept their secrets, and were forgotten.
Yesterday I had the transparencies scanned, and finally got to see lots of pictures I had never actually seen before of Holly as a baby, Mike at the time that I would have watched him riding his tricycle around the graveyard, and me... at exactly half my age: A young journalist who had sold a very small handful of short stories and two non-fiction books, with dreams of writing fiction and comics. At the time I was dressing in grey, but was getting tired of the way that you would buy something grey and take it home and discover that it was a blueish grey or a brownish grey, and wondering if I'd have the same problem if I just started to dress in black.
And half a lifetime on, it seemed like it might be good to put one up here. I checked, and Mary didn't mind. What odd clothes we wore back then. What big glasses. And look, my hair is practically normal.
So long ago, and it went like the blink of an eye.
...
Birthday wishes are flooding in from around the globe. I wish I could reply to everyone personally, but it would take the next 365 days... so thank you. Thank you all.
I think if I had grown up in Minnesota I would have developed a crush on Garrison Keillor rather than Joey McIntyre from NKOTB. So, when Garrison Keillor talks about books and libraries? It's like whispering sweet nothings in my ear.
A snippet:
"But a library is still a library. It's a place where serious people go to have the freedom to think without anybody poking and prodding them, in the company of other serious people who sit silently around us and yet encourage us in our own pursuits and projects."
Thanks to
Leda Schubert and
child_lit for the
salon.com link.
Shortly, after posting about my new project, I received this wonderful e-mail. It reminded me why creating children's books is the best job ever. And it makes me want to paint Ling and Ting in striped sailor dresses.
Dear Ms. Grace Lin,
Our names are Jennifer MeiDe and Rebekah MeiRui. We are ten years old and we are home schooled. We were born in Hefei China, but now we live in the United States. We are identical twins.
We have several books by you. The first book our Mom and Dad bought was Dim Sum For Everyone! The book we liked the most is The Year Of The Dog. Both of us can't wait to get The Year Of The Rat because our Dad and we were all born in that year.
We like your books and know that your new book will be Ling and Ting. This new book is about Chinese American twins, just like us. We look the same, but we have many differences. Jennifer loves to draw paper dolls of people. Rebekah loves to draw animals and draw background scenes.
We each write stories, but we write different kinds of stories. We are taking an online writing course at Northwestern University. Both of us like origami, just like in your other book, Lissy’s Friends , but we each make different kinds of origami figures. When we were babies, Rebekah wore a red ribbon and Jennifer wore a yellow ribbon so that they could tell us apart. Both of us still like those different colors as our favorites today.
We do the same things, but we do them in different ways. If you have any questions about Chinese American twins, please e-mail us.
Becky
and
Jenny
Rebekah(on right) and Jenny (on left)
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Absolutley awesome - I think that is why I love your books so much. Our daughter was also born in China and your stories are so fun to encourage her heritage. We LOVE Grace Lin and as a librarian - our library is full of your books!!! Thanks and keep writing!!!
http://bilbybunch.blogspot.com
http://inthepages.blogspot.com
That's fantastic, Grace! What a nice treat to know how much you have influenced kids.
how cute!
What a great letter to receive...if you ever question WHY you do what you do, refer back to those adorable faces! I want to see Ling and Ting in striped sailor suits too, and so do my 10-yr-old twins!
that's so cute! :)
I happen to be the lucky teacher of these twins. Our course is an online one, so this is the first time I got to see what Becky and Jenny look like. Now I have faces to think of when I read their strong work. No doubt books by such authors as you, Grace, encourage kids to become writers themselves.