Shop for Children
A Selection of Fiction for Children and Young Adult Readers Certain to Make Great Holiday Presents
Jill Norgren writes: Here is an opportunity for grandparents and special friends looking for children’s and young adult books to hear straight from the mouths of young readers. This year I asked about gift suggestions from my granddaughters, 17, 13, and 10, as well as young friends 4 to 15 who live in Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, and New York City. I asked each of them, "which books did you most enjoy reading this past year that you think others your age would also enjoy?" Some of their favorites are new, but many are classics. more »
The Art of Pinning: Museum Pinners Worth Following
Val Castronovo writes: Since its founding in 2010, Pinterest, the photo-sharing site that has become the third most popular social network after Facebook and Twitter, has been enthusiastically embraced by art museums across the country. A virtual bulletin board, Pinterest allows users — more than 70 million now — to set up “boards” to which they “pin” images of favorite things — in this case, artworks and artifacts culled from museum collections and archives. more »
A Gifting Idea: Using Engineering Skills With a DIY Dollhouse Kit
The creators of Roominate, Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen, didn’t grow up playing with traditional girl toys. When Brooks asked for a Barbie her father gave her a mini-saw. Chen adored Legos and built hundreds of extravagant creations with her brothers. Brooks majored in mechanical engineering at MIT, while Bettina studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. When they met as graduate students at Stanford, said Chen, “We thought that there’d be a lot more women in grad school, but there weren’t.” more »
Taylor Branch, Barbara Kingsolver, Katherine Paterson, Natasha Trethewey: Authors at the National Book Festival
Authors and poets Margaret Atwood, Marie Arana, Taylor Branch, Don DeLillo, Khaled Hosseini, Barbara Kingsolver, Brad Meltzer, Joyce Carol Oates, Katherine Paterson and Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will be among writers speaking. New Library of Congress exhibits celebrate opera, the majestic art form that has transfixed audiences for more than 400 years, and the other exhibit celebrates what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the greatest demonstration for freedom in the nation’s history." more »
