The Reading Culture

“Life is a wheel and humanity has been through countless cycles of ups and downs. The things that seem so dire now won't be this dire forever. Eventually, there is an upswing. I always needed that reminder, and it made me think that my young readers need that reminder as well.” - Yamile Saied Mendez With a storytelling

It’s official. Two years in a row makes it a tradition.  The Reading Culture Yearbook is here.  It’s the year-end celebratory episode where we look back and highlight some of our favorite moments in the form of awarding superlatives. Or, as we dubbed them last year and seemingly forgot, “The Readies.” This year’s editi

“I am saying: reader, we're going on a journey. You are going to come with me and then I'm pulling them gently into the narrative. And then again, if I'm doing my job, I'm holding them like a hug.” - Andrea Davis Pinkney Andrea Davis Pinkney stands tall at just 4’11”, but she is still somehow larger than life. In her w

We revisit our episode with Gregory Maguire. ******"That's really all we are obliged to do for those we call our enemies. We are obliged to see them as humans, and then we behave the way we will. We are obliged not to consider them as less than human because that way, all hell breaks loose. - Gregory Maguire Gregory Ma

“I think kids are actually generally a better audience for literary fiction, for art, for ambitious storytelling that asks the reader to do work. And a lot of that is just based on how their brains work and their place in the world.” - Mac Barnett Growing up, Mac Barnett’s mom never took their picture books off their s

“I think it caused me to get over some of the sort of narcissistic impulses in my writing and not make it about me and impressing, but instead about having the best reading experience I could imagine.” - Eliot Schrefer At a young age, Eliot Schrefer acknowledged that he was hiding himself. Growing up queer when he did