Therefore since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. --Polonius, from Shakespeare's Hamlet Children's author Vivian Kirkfield knows that brevity…

For a quick weekend read, my daughter recently plucked a copy of Bruce Coville's My Teacher Flunked the Planet from one of our family bookshelves. I can't remember if it's…

What better way to remember a year than to revisit the stories it contained? Here's a (spottily) annotated list of what I read this year, with a few titles left…

The Demmon family moved once again this summer, from northern Virginia to southern Missouri. For my daughter, who is about to become a teenager (what?!), it is her eighth house…

On our walk to school this morning, my six-year-old asked, “What’s it like to be home alone when we’re all at school and Daddy’s at work?” “Well,” I said, “that’s…

I'm all for making full use of the local public library. But there comes a time, after checking the same title out over and over and over and OVER, to…

When I picked up my youngest from preschool this week, I was delighted to see on the colorful, hand-written poster labeled "What We Did Today" that the class read the…