Awards! The Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals were announced last week, and they went to the same book for the first time in their history: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay. The Walter Scott Prize (for historical fiction) went to Sebastian Barry for On Canaan’s Side (I think Em will like that result!).
- R. I. P. Booker Prize winner Barry Unsworth (for Sacred Hunger) died last week, aged 81. Obituaries here and here.
- Interview! The Guardian has a full-on interview with Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. And not so much an interview, but still a lengthy piece on Jo Nesbø, via the NY Times.
Well, it was bound to happen at some point: Harry Potter as a literary anti-christ. In Alan Moore’s latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century 2009 (out soon!).
- Lists! Just one this time. The excellent folks at Flavorwire have 10 short films based on short stories.
- As a parent myself, I found this piece rather interesting: How to Read a Racist Book to Your Kids. So many classic children’s books are as glorious as they are racist, or homophobic, or otherwise anachronistic – and often you don’t realize it until you read them aloud to your child. How do you navigate through the tricky bits?
- Quiz! How much poetry do you know by heart? Evidently more than I thought: 7/10! I have to say that the ones I had wrong did seem to fit in better with the original. *cough*
- And finally: our Aviva found this series of dreamy lose-yourself-in-books pictures by Joel Robinson (via brainpickings.org):
