We miss Eva Ibbotson

"I think if I had to choose a moment of pure happiness in my long life as a reader it would be the moment I picked up [Daddy Long -Legs] and found, most gloriously, that it had absolutely nothing to do with insects." 

BREAD readers stock their own shelves

We first learned of Three Times Lucky from a Harvey fourth-grader. Jose had spotted the book summary on a Scholastic Books order form. He requested it from us: urgently, and in writing. 

And what a wonderful choice! Moses is an orphaned sixth-grader, who narrates an absurd but layered tale from a small Southern town. Sheila Turnage's assured writing, inimitable character voices and pitch-perfect tone remind us of the brilliant adult novel, A Short History of a Small Place (T.R. Pearson).

"As the lunch crowd drifted in, I plugged in the jukebox. The lunch crowd is the breakfast crowd shaved and combed, plus the Azalea Women, who call themselves the Uptown Garden Club."

We are so pleased that children have been able to follow Mo and Dale, in the subsequent books of the series.

H.H. Munro, to his mother

Out-of-print gems regularly thwart our new-book mission, and require recourse to sources such as abebooks. As it has become increasingly difficult to replace the collected short stories of Saki, we were thrilled by this NYRB reissue.  As icing, the collection contains the illustrations of Edward Gorey. 

The New York Review of Books continues to burnish its reputation as no mere press, but a cultural treasure.

Wait - what?

Sometimes we rely upon consensus book orders. Dictionary distributions, for example, can trigger yawns. But just let one junior-high kid grumble that a teacher "uses words that I don't even know". Suddenly: everyone needed a MW Collegiate Dictionary, stat. 

2011, Garfield Park site

Summertime, and the reading is easy.

Return to us, Verlyn

"Childhood is an oasis of repetitive acts, so much so that there's something shocking about the first time a young reader reads a book only once and then moves on to the next. There's a hunger in that act but also a forsaking, a glimpse of adulthood to come." 

(More Scenes from the Rural Life, Verlyn Klinkenborg)

Intelligence is equally distributed; opportunity is not

BREAD offers one free book each week, but some kids need an hourly allotment.

Austin reader Olavion once listened gravely to the word of the day, pugnacious, and used it correctly. We added that the pugnacious person starts fights, while the truculent person seethes silently with the same feelings. "Oh," said Olavion, "pugnacious means the instigator."

Olavion was in the first grade.