Notes from NYRB Classics
“No, let’s be Christmas pirates,” Jemima said, “and put all our treasure into poor people’s stockings and let nobody know who did it: let the people all go to bed in despair wanting money, and then find it in their stockings in the morning and be made happy.”
“I say,” Peter said, “of all the sickly sentiments …”
“It’s a jolly good Christmas sentiment.”
“Well, I didn’t dress up to be a pirate to have Christmas sentiment.”
—John Masefield’s The Box of Delights
We’ve always said that The Bear That Wasn’t would make an excellent graduation gift (“Welcome to the real world, kid!”), but now Rosalie Franks, blogging at The Southern Poverty Law Center, has a suggestion about how to work the book into a lesson plan:
Through this tale, students consider a profound question: Is each one of us who we think we are or are we defined by what other people say about us? What does it mean to have a sense of self?
Read the rest of her post here.
Happy Birthday Daniel Pinkwater (or Daniel M. Pinkwater, or Daniel Manus Pinkwater, or D. Manus Pinkwater). To celebrate his birthday we thought we’d share the author bio from Lizard Music, recently re-published in our Children’s Collection series:
DANIEL PINKWATER has written about one hundred books, many of them good. Lizard Music was almost the first one he wrote, and remains his personal favorite. It is entirely his own work, and the story that it was discovered as a manuscript inserted in a bale of banana leaves, probably to increase the weight, is merely legend, and without foundation in fact.
Saturday October 15, 2011 is the day of the annual Boston Book Festival. We’ll be in Copley Square from 10 am to 5pm selling discounted books, giving away issues of the magazine (and offering special subscription rates), and generally getting to know our local readers. If you’re a fan, please make yourself known to us!
We hope we have a better time of it than the hapless Peterkin family did when they went to the Boston “Carnival of Authors.” Then again, they met Charles Dickens (or did they?).
Mr. Peterkin said that if they gained funds enough they might arrange a booth of their own, and sit in it, and take the carnival comfortably. But Agamemnon reminded him that none of the family were authors, and only authors had booths. Solomon John, indeed, had once started upon writing a book, but he was not able to think of anything to put in it, and nothing had occurred to him yet.
Mr. Peterkin urged him to make one more effort. If his book could come out before the carnival he could go as an author, and might have a booth of his own, and take his family.
But Agamemnon declared it would take years to become an author. You might indeed publish something, but you had to make sure that it would be read. Mrs. Peterkin, on the other hand, was certain that libraries were filled with books that never were read, yet authors had written them. For herself, she had not read half the books in their own library. And she was glad there was to be a Carnival of Authors, that she might know, who they were.
From “The Peterkins at the ‘Carnival of Authors’ in Boston” in Lucretia P. Hale’s The Peterkin Papers
Just arrived in the office—possibly the most lovable book we’ve ever published, Something for Christmas, by Palmer Brown (who wrote the beloved Beyond the Pawpaw Trees). It’s placed beside a standard classic for size comparison.
Something for Christmas by Palmer Brown
(It’s June and all, but this is too adorable not to post)
Above: From The Bear That Wasn’t by Frank Tashlin. (The best part of this image might be the Foreman’s badge)
The first 50 books are now available in a bundle at 50% off the cover price.
