"Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Severely dyslexic and wanting to know more, he took it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford's...

"In Wild Things, Vanity Fair contributing editor Bruce Handy revisits the classics of every American childhood, from fairy tales to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and explores the back stories of their creators, using context and biography to understand how some of the most insightful, creative, and witty authors and illustrators of their times created their often deeply personal masterpieces. Along the way, Handy learns what The Cat in the Hat says...

The stories we read as children shape us for the rest of our lives. But it is never too late to discover that transformative spark of hope that children's classics can ignite within us. Award-winning children's author Mitali Perkins grew up steeped in stories--escaping into her books on the fire escape of a Flushing apartment building and, later, finding solace in them as she navigated between the cultures of her suburban California school and her...

How did Jon Scieszka get so funny? He grew up as one of six brothers with Catholic school, lots of comic books, lazy summers at the lake with time to kill, babysitting misadventures, TV shows, and jokes told at family dinner.

For over twenty-five years, Cranes comic strip, Pickles, has been delighting readers around the world, and for the first time Brian Crane brings his beloved characters into a book intended specifically for children. Cranes crotchety but endearing senior, Earl Pickles, can be humorous and often touching, and when his precocious grandson, Nelson, asks his gramps to tell him a story, Earls imagination takes over. The two embark on a journey filled with...

Stars are made of lemon juice, dolls go dancing on the moon, and rain makes applesauce.

"What children's book changed the way you see the world?" Anita Silvey asked this question to more than one hundred of our most respected and admired leaders in society, and she learned about the books that shaped financiers, actors, singers, athletes, activists, artists, comic book creators, novelists, illustrators, teachers... Writers (Anna Quindlen, Sherman Alexie, Bobbie Ann Mason, Azar Nafisi, Angela Johnson, David McCullough, Ann Tyler,...

Uses a dialog between two friends, one who estimates, one who counts precisely, to show estimation at work in everyday life.