Elena Ferrante will be publishing a children’s book, The Beach at Night, this December. Revisit our own Jacob Lambert’s series on whether or not picture books are leading our children astray to prepare for the release.
Elena Ferrante Writing for Kids
Rolling Readers
“They don’t want to get off the bus because they wanted to keep listening.” A Texas library system has outfitted a handful of public school buses with wi-fi access and digital audiobooks, reports The Digital Reader. Pair with this celebration of perambulatory reading.
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A Strange Kind of Sense
“I’m fascinated by epigenetics. My father had polio that affected his left leg, and I walk with my left foot turned in for no good reason at all. I was attacked by a dog when I was ten, and both my daughters have an irrational fear of dogs. It makes a strange kind of sense.” Year in Reading alum Rebecca Makkai discusses Music for Wartime and her writing process with Christine Rice. We interviewed Makkai following the release of The Hundred-Year House.
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Au Revoir Archie
After 73 years, everyone’s favorite redheaded comic book hero will be killed off. Archie Andrews will die in a July issue of the Life With Archie comic. “He dies saving the life of a friend and does it in his usual selfless way,” Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater said. That won’t be the last you’ll see of Archie, though, because Lena Dunham will write a few issues in one of Archie’s other comic incarnations.
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Three Kafkas Begin the Day
Isotropic Films has begun filming a “fresh, modern horror [film] version” of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. At The New York Review of Books, Mark Harman offers a new translation of the late author’s “A Message From the Emperor,” which Harman calls “hauntingly oblique.” Further away still, Elif Batuman recognizes some Kafkaesque street signage in Turkey.
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If It Is Fine Tomorrow
This list of the ten best weather events in fiction history includes, among other things, the mud in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and the fraught weather forecast from Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. Let’s talk a little bit more about weather with this review from The Millions.
According to What’s Trending
It might sound weird, but Jon Methven McSweeney’s really wishes you would tell him how he did with your egg whites and avocado wrap.
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Alex Karras Remembered
Bill Morris, clearly maneuvering for the title of Motor City Poet Laureate, follows up his piece on Detroit’s comeback with a vivid account of Lion legend Alex Karras. “Karras will always be a pink giant with a towel wrapped around his waist,” Morris writes.