“Ban a book? How can someone control what I read?” I demanded. It was the mid-1990s and our local librarians had asked my mother, a trusted patron with an educator’s objective eye, to evaluate a young adult novel another parent was lobbying to ban. For me, books were like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and in almost unlimited supply. I... Continue Reading →
Recent Reads: His Dark Materials trilogy
First, a confession: it took me much longer than it should have to read this trilogy. My dad bought The Golden Compass in a local children’s bookshop when I was about ten years old (I recall the store fondly because it had the best reading nook I’ve ever encountered: an artificial tree molded into the... Continue Reading →