The most famous creation of Kay Nielsen (1886-1957), one of the outstanding illustrators at the dawn of the 20th century, is the demon that steals the show at the end…Continue Reading →
I binge read Brian Jay Jones’s biography “Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination” (Dutton). I couldn’t put it down. Jones tells Geisel’s bumpy journey…Continue Reading →
“Walks to the Paradise Garden: A Lowdown Southern Odyssey” by Jonathan Williams, Roger Manley and Guy Mendes “provides one last look at the artists and place-makers of the Southern United…Continue Reading →
“Off Season” (Drawn and Quarterly) starts off depressing and heads toward despair. In this new graphic novel from Vermont cartoonist James Sturm, co-founder of both the Seattle Stranger and the…Continue Reading →
Patricia Marx and Roz Chast have a delicious premise for their slim illustrated humor/advice book “Why Don’t You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It? A Mother’s Suggestions”…Continue Reading →
Margaret Atwood was living in West Berlin in 1984, the city still divided by the Berlin Wall, when she began writing the story of Christian fundamentalists who assassinate the president…Continue Reading →
In the fall of 1936, as the first edition of “The Hobbit” was in production, its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, gave his publisher a series of maps that he’d drawn to…Continue Reading →
“Johnny Boo Is King!,” the new graphic novel for kids from James Kockalka, the former Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont, begins with the ghost Johnny Boo discovered hiding in a bush…Continue Reading →
In Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest novel “A Brightness Long Ago” (due out from Viking May 14), Count Uberto, dubbed “The Beast,” has his men scour his kingdom for young women…Continue Reading →
When Robert Caro, the legendary political journalist-historian, was a young investigative reporter at the crusading, liberal New York newspaper Newsday, a top editor gave him advice on how to dig…Continue Reading →