akitron:

“The problem that needs to be fixed is not kick all the girls out of YA, it’s teach boys that stories featuring female protagonists or written by female authors also apply to them. Boys fall in love. Boys want to be important. Boys have hopes and fears and dreams and ambitions. What boys also have is a sexist society in which they are belittled for “liking girl stuff.” Male is neutral, female is specific. I heard someone mention that Sarah Rees Brennan’s THE DEMON’S LEXICON would be great for boys, but they’d never read it with that cover. Friends, then the problem is NOT with the book. It’s with the society that’s raising that boy. It’s with the community who inculcated that boy with the idea that he can’t read a book with an attractive guy on the cover. Here’s how we solve the OMG SO MANY GIRLS IN YA problem: quit treating women like secondary appendages. Quit treating women’s art like it’s a niche, novelty creation only for girls. Quit teaching boys to fear the feminine, quit insisting that it’s a hardship for men to have to relate to anything that doesn’t specifically cater to them. Because if I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and want to grow up to be an archaeologist, there’s no reason at all that a boy shouldn’t be able to read THE DEMON’S LEXICON with its cover on. My friends, sexism doesn’t just hurt women, and our young men’s abysmal rate of attraction to literacy is the proof of it.”

— The Problem is Not the Books by Saundra Mitchell

Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots: Lara Pulver as Mrs. Jeepers

motherjones:npr:nprfreshair:Fresh Air remembers Maurice Sendak

Higher praise there could not be. —Wright

Heavens.

fishingboatproceeds:tyleroakley:

R.I.P. Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, who died today at age 83.

Sendak on death: “I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”

“The whole promise is to do the work.”

Oh, no.

(Source: one-quiet-night)

Dystopias should be insurgent. They should force readers to question who they are, what their society is like, and what they take for granted. A good dystopia will illuminate the horrors right before our eyes, and one can hope that if it does its job well, it will create empathy and humanity in world that is sorely lacking.

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Invisible Dystopia | Kirkus Book Reviews (via annaetc)

(Source: readyforabducti0n)

(Source: unypl)

James Joyce: Is it Sanskrit?

francishwang:

In 1992, the Chinese writer Xiao Qian and his wife Wen Jieruo were translating Ulysses into Chinese for the first time, and they submitted a number of questions to the British Council in Beijing. Harper’s Magazine published a selection of their questions. The resulting translation would become a surprise best-seller in China on its release in 1994.

Does “dead meat trade” (page 81) mean selling the meat of dead cows or selling beef exclusively?

Does the word “jigs” in the phrase “incipient jigs” (page 105) mean “mad”? Or does it mean “swindler,” as the slang dictionary has it?

What is meant by “on the shaughraun” (page 112)? Does it mean working hard?

Does “picking his tootles” (page 139) mean picking his teeth, or to eat daintily, or to prattle?

“Kyrios” (page 165) is neither Greek nor Latin. What language is it? What does it mean?

Does “pinprick” (page 193) mean small penis?

“His gouty fingers nakkering” (page 211): does this mean that his fingers are trembling, or that he’s snapping his fingers?

“From Eblana to Slievemargy” (page 242): can’t locate these places.

Does “jivic” (page 24) mean brilliant?

What is the meaning of “talafana, alavatar, … wataklasat” (page 248)? Is it Sanskrit?

Does “all the codology of the business” (page 250) mean all the minute details of the business?

What is the meaning of “loodheramaun” in the phrase “a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew” (page 25l)?

Is “Sluagh na h-Eirearn” Irish or Gaelic? What does it mean?

P.S. It would appear that for some of Harper’s 158-year online archive, they ran a quick OCR-pass on some of their archived page scans, which I discovered when I was able to do a quick copy-and-paste out of their 20-year-old article. Which is awesome for public discourse, and pretty much the opposite of what you’re supposed to do if you’re trying to monetize eyeballs or whatever. Have you thought of subscribing to Harper’s?

selucha:

El Biblio-Burro. Es una iniciativa de un maestro (en mayúsculas), que se llama Luis Soriano Borges, que recorre los pueblos más escondidos de Colombia para enseñar los libros a los niños. El burro se llama Beto y la burra Alfa.

The Biblio-Donkey. This is an initiative by a teacher named Luis Soriano Borges, who travels through the most distant and hidden villages of Colombia to bring books to children. The male donkey is named Beto and the female is Alfa.

firstbook:

First Book wants to give away 1 MILLION BOOKS TO KIDS IN NEED OVER THE NEXT 10 DAYS. Here’s the catch: We want the world to know about the issue of illiteracy and how they can help us fight it. In support of our effort, we will give away a book for every “re-blog”, “retweet”, and “share” we get of  this message on twitter, tumblr and facebook. Get to sharing.