We all know that author Nicholas Sparks wrote
The Notebook, which became a movie starring the sweet duo Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Before The Notebook Sparks's novel Message in a Bottle became a movie. Later came A Walk to Remember starring Mandy Moore, and this year his book
Nights in Rodanthe arrived on the big screen towing Richard Gere and Diane Lane in its wake.
We love our kids despite their imperfections much like they love us. The book
Always ($11) celebrates this sentiment and assures youngsters that the love stands when they're well behaved and when they aren't.
The pages are filled with questions a son poses to his mother like, "Do you love me when I eat my peas?"
Most tots like to move around as much as they love to sit down with mommy for a good book.
Gallop!: A Scanimation Picture Book ($11) unites both in a fun book for everyone to enjoy.
Unlike any text I've seen, Gallop!
What did you learn in history class? That the Rosenbergs were innocent? Gorbachev, not Reagan, ended the Cold War?
Do you spend too much time ensuring that all of your coffee-table books maintain perfect jackets? In a
recent LA Times article, Trey Russell, owner of Laguna Beach gift boutique
Aris tells you to ditch that thinking — and those jackets. Russell maintains
that "Book jackets just get torn, anyway, you might as well get rid of them .
My sister, who's been drawing blueprints in one form or another since we were little kids, is currently finishing her second year of grad school at the architecture department at UC Berkeley. Since she spends about 18 hours a day in the studio as it is (I'm not even coming close to exaggerating), she probably doesn't want to spend her few free hours browsing through architecture books, at least during the semester. However, once the holiday break kicks in, I'm pretty sure that she'll be curled up on a sofa with a more recreational, picture-heavy architecture book in her hands.
One evening this weekend, I passed by one of my favorite local design shops here in San Francisco, FLIPP (Fashionable Living in Petite Places), and couldn't help but notice the window display. On a settee next to a vintage portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the shopkeepers set a copy of The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama — a subtle and handsome way to show political support. Considering that Obama's challenges ahead are
being compared to those of Lincoln, it's also quite appropriate.
If there's one thing that most tots do well, it's building things up and tearing them down. Aside from giving them the literal building blocks to make their imaginations come alive, the quirky and delightful book
Iggy Peck Architect ($11) will help them to see the positive side of being eccentric, creative, and persistent.
Appealing to elementary-age children, author Andrea Beaty tells a tale of a young boy who has always delighted in building creative structures — even a tower of dirty diapers!
Friends keep asking if my daughter knows that she is getting a sibling. My answer to that is, "Sort of." She can nod her head when asked if there's a baby growing in mommy's tummy, but I don't think she understands that life is actually developing.
Though most book-ban inquiries remain hush hush, 9,600 requests to censor have been logged since 1990. With the help of news and librarian reports, the American Library Association tracks what tawdry titles threaten to jump off bookshelves into children’s knapsacks. And now
USA Today has made a fancy chart, sortable by title, author, reasons for challenge, location, and final decision.
