Rebecca Reads

In The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next is an agent for SO-27, working in the Literatec division in alternative 1985. Her job is to stop literary thieves from taking original manuscripts. This is a very important job, for people in Thursday’s world are able step in and out of books: if one were [...]

I was looking for a light-hearted mystery to fill the requirement for my library summer reading program, and The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie King certainly fit the bill. I’m glad I read it.
Mary Russell is an astute young woman residing in the World War I British countryside when she meets her neighbor, a retired middle-aged [...]

Poetry for Young People: William Shakespeare (edited by David Scott Kastan and Marina Kastan and illustrated by Glenn Harrington) goes beyond Shakespeare’s sonnets. In just 50 pages, the editors have also included some of the key speeches from Shakespeare’s repertoire.
As with other volumes in the series, each page has a bit of explanation about the [...]

Green Knowe is a medieval castle in the English countryside, and it is full of enchantment and ghosts. L.M. Boston’s chronicles about the manor house are full of child-like delight.
And yet, describing the series as a whole is challenging. They all, but one, involved magic of some kind. They all, but one, focus on a [...]

In medieval children’s primers, the alphabet was the main tool of learning and was often portrayed in a way that also taught religion (Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature, page 61). Poems and teachings would be in the order of the alphabet. This had biblical precedence, as the 22 stanzas of Psalm 118 “use the twenty-two letters [...]

In honor of Book Bloggers Appreciation Week, I’m giving away my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For more BBAW giveaways, visit here and here.

I don’t usually reread children’s fantasy, but as I read one of Madeleine L’Engle’s memoirs, I decided to reread her most well-known novel, A Wrinkle in Time.

Favorite Authors
When I was a child, I would go to the library on my bike with a backpack full of already-consumed books, return them, and get another full backpack full of to-be-read books. Sometimes I’d go through a series, reading every single one as they were available at the library. Other times I went through [...]