Author Archives: topstory

Fifty years ago, author E.L. Konigsburg wrote her children’s literature classic that highlighted the wonder of museums       A half-century ago, a girl and brother ran away to New York City from their suburban Connecticut home. And the Metropolitan … Continued

An anonymous writer’s spinoff of Cervantes’ masterpiece showed the peril and potential of new printing technology       Although Don Quixote wasn’t the first great novel (that honor belongs to the Tale of Genji, written by an 11th-century lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court), … Continued

Agatha Christie wrote her famous detective novel based on an even more famous kidnapping       In Agatha Christie’s crime novel Murder on the Orient Express, the well-mustachioed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot solves the grisly stabbing of an American tycoon traveling … Continued

Though the practice is now more associated with Halloween, spooking out your family is well within the Christmas spirit       For the last hundred years, Americans have kept ghosts in their place, letting them out only in October, in … Continued

The American naturalist spent the last years of his life cataloguing America’s four-legged creatures        he spring of 1843 came late. In March the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were still choked with ice. But by April 25, the weather … Continued

The dime novels and story papers entertained boys and launched a popular culture we still consume today        In the early evening dark of March 30, 1889, a thick crowd of eager children – estimates say as many as … Continued

Storybooks feature a fair amount of factual errors—and those errors can be revealing       In Joyce Wan’s 2015 picture book, The Whale in My Swimming Pool, a large and very round blue whale sits on top of a boy’s tiny … Continued

Nearly three centuries before heroines like Katniss and Meg Murray, Sarah Fielding published a book on the values of female education       Consider with me, what is the true use of reading,” begins Sarah Fielding in the preface to … Continued

The writer’s dystopia, populated by ‘automaton figures,’ was surprisingly modern       If you’re a fan of the TV series, “Westworld,” you’re probably aware that it’s based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 film of the same name. What you may not know … Continued