She published her first book in her 40s and became the biggest selling author of the past decade in any genre – The Gruffalo alone has sold 13m copies. How did this former busker make it so big?The room where the children’s author Julia Donaldson writes – the heart of her vast picture book empire – is down a winding staircase, in the cellar of her grand white house in Steyning, West Sussex. Her desk looks out on the street at knee height. “I’m thinking of writing a book about legs,” Donaldson said, as she showed me around the house this summer. Children from the nearby school often wave in at her as they pass. Donaldson is well known in Steyning, due to her frequent signings at the local bookshop. She and her husband, Malcolm, a retired paediatrician, recently bought the local post office to save it from closure. But elsewhere she can walk the pavement without being recognised. “I got a letter the other day for Jacqueline Wilson,” Donaldson told me. “It said: ‘You’re my favourite author!’”If you are not someone who spends much time with young children, you may only be dimly aware of Donaldson’s work – although you will probably be familiar with her most famous creation, the Gruffalo. If you have children, however, you will know her as a cultural juggernaut whose influence among children is perhaps only surpassed by the works of Disney and CBeebies. Donaldson, who is 72, has written more than 210 books: chiefly picture books, but also poetry, plays, a 60-part phonics... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2020-12-17 06:00:31 UTC ]
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Dujiangyan Zhongshuge is the latest bookstore designed by X+Living, and it’s stunning. The very best books transport you to another world, and the most magical bookstores help make that a reality. Chinese bookseller Zhongshuge is renowned for its stunning bookstores, and its latest outpost, in... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-11-02 08:00:34 UTC ]
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Little, Brown imprint The Bridge Street Press has pre-empted for a six-figure sum world rights to Power, People and Painting: The Story of Art in Fifteen Cities by curator Caroline Campbell. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-01 16:23:49 UTC ]
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Historian David Nasaw recounts the struggles of Jews and others who had no place to go. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-10-30 12:00:00 UTC ]
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#left stranded
The world’s largest publisher did it again in 2019, with revenue of $5.64 billion. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-10-30 04:00:00 UTC ]
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These mathematical science fiction books use mathematics in world-building to advance the plot and build characters. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-28 10:37:00 UTC ]
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THE DEVELOPERS OF Beirut’s Eden Bay needed to clean up the raw sewage on the beach of their luxury development, so they rerouted it into a storm pipe. “And then the rains came,” writes Lina Mounzer in her darkly comedic account from the new anthology Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-25 12:30:52 UTC ]
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Get through the winter with some of the longest series on shelves, including The Guin Saga by Kaoru Kurimoto. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-23 10:34:00 UTC ]
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When Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) visited the University of Oklahoma in April 1978 to be honored as the fifth laureate of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, he marveled over the improbability of it all: “The Neustadt literary prize belongs too, in my opinion, to those things which... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-21 08:48:17 UTC ]
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Helena Andrews-Dyer and R. Eric Thomas look at the long career of the congresswoman turned social media darling. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-10-20 13:07:36 UTC ]
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The new photo book Overview Timelapse shows the startling ways humanity is changing the planet, from lithium mines to the ravages of climate change. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2020-10-14 12:00:00 UTC ]
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“Is This Anything?” is not a traditional memoir, but it does offer insights into Seinfeld’s personal history. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-10-13 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Getting an MLIS to work in libraries while working a full time job can be challenging, and this librarian shares her experience. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-12 10:30:00 UTC ]
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#libraries
YouTube, Spotify, podcasts or TikTok may be digital, but they are decidedly warmer than, say, search-engine optimisation. Continue reading at Media Week
[ Media Week | 2020-10-12 09:21:30 UTC ]
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Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens. Marin Ireland narrates Rumaan Alam’s stunning audiobook Leave the World Behind, which... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-12 08:00:42 UTC ]
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What do actual readers think about the books which land on the New York Times Bestseller List? A new study finds out. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-09 10:33:00 UTC ]
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In "Leave the World Behind," a family on vacation tries to ignore the catastrophe unfolding outside their cozy retreat. Continue reading at The Huffington Post
[ The Huffington Post | 2020-10-06 16:35:31 UTC ]
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For better or worse, the six stories in “Nothing Like I Imagined (Except for Sometimes)” deliver pure fluff. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-10-06 12:00:00 UTC ]
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#mindy kaling
Sarah Hall has become the first author to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice in its 15-year history. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-06 01:38:09 UTC ]
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#sarah hall
Edward P. Jones’s The Known World occupies a somewhat odd space in the literary canon: it is highly decorated, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and it was even a bestseller, but 17 years after its publication, it feels curiously underread. I acknowledge, of course, that all notions of “underread,” like... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-05 08:49:24 UTC ]
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Are these the end times? Who knows! Settle into this current quasi-dystopian reality with recent books by American writers of color. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-02 10:35:59 UTC ]
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