By Sourcebooks

Ravina Thakkar, an eighth-grader at Heritage Grove Middle School in Plainfield, loves to dance, listen to music and write stories. She excels in school and has dreamt of being a published author someday. And now that someday is here, thanks to the help and dedication of her social worker, her wish granters at Make-A-Wish Illinois, and Naperville-based book publisher Sourcebooks.
Ravina has cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening medical condition affecting both her lungs and digestive system. Ravina’s disease has not defined her, and more importantly, has not stopped her from pursuing her dreams. She was 11 when she won first place in the 2011 Plainfield Great Read writing contest for her short story, “A Magical Thing.” Referred to Make-A-Wish Illinois by her hospital social worker, she was then connected with Sourcebooks, and in the two years since, Ravina and her family have seen her dream become a reality.

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Posted on October 31, 2013

Black America And The Fight For A Place To Call Home

“African American families in Chicago and nationwide have been hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, particularly with mortgage lenders exploiting a long history of discrimination in lending and housing,” Curtis Black writes for Newstips.
“But what happens when they challenge the banks that have evicted millions of families and destroyed their life savings and economic security?
“That’s the subject of a new book, A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home, which looks at the issue through the experiences of four families.
“(Essence has published an excerpt featuring the story of Chicagoan Martha Biggs, now an activist with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign.)

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Posted on October 30, 2013

By Fair Test

More than 120 leading authors and illustrators of books for children, including several national award winners, are calling on President Obama to “change the way we assess learning so that schools nurture creativity, exploration, and a love of literature.”
In a letter delivered to the White House [Tuesday], the coalition stated, “Our public schools spend far too much time preparing for reading tests and too little time curling up with books that fire their imaginations.”
“All children must have the freedom to grow, to evolve, to develop,” explained acclaimed poet Maya Angelou, who spoke at Obama’s inauguration.
“We parents, authors, illustrators are standing up for our children. We desperately need you and your administration to stand with us.”

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Posted on October 23, 2013

Plus: The Chicago Public Library’s New Patronage

Getting Gwendolyn
“The University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired the archives of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks,” the New York Times reports.
“Brooks was born in Kansas, but her family moved to Chicago when she was an infant, and she became closely associated with that city. She was the poet laureate of Illinois for 32 years, until her death in 2000. Among many other honors, she won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for her collection Annie Allen.
“Valerie Hotchkiss, the director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, said the institution also holds the archives of Carl Sandburg, another writer famously from Chicago, and the state’s poet laureate before Brooks.”

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Posted on October 21, 2013

Plus: Head Off & Split

1. Book Club With Steven Wolk.
Steven Wolk has taught third through eighth grade. After teaching third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade at The Foundations School, a Chicago public school. He is now Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

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Posted on October 15, 2013

Plus: Red Hen Poetry

1. Voices of Protest.
“The Guild Literary Complex has received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund in support of Voices of Protest, a year-long literary project that will present live, multidisciplinary events with contemporary Middle Eastern poets and emerging Chicago authors to engage issues of language as protest and words as agents of change,” the GLC announced this morning.
“The project will commence in the Spring of 2014 with the Guild hosting Iraqi poetess Manal al Sheikh and Palestinian poet Mazen Maarouf, both writers currently living in exile in Scandinavian countries due to the bold and unrelenting character of their work.
“Select Chicago authors will be invited to join the project and work with the guest poets, eventually traveling to Norway to attend the Kappitel Stavanger International Festival of Literature and Freedom of Speech.
“Upon their return to Chicago they will present their work and observations to area audiences. An anthology including all participating artists will be published at the conclusion of the project in early 2015.

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Posted on October 8, 2013

By lrst94

Back in the day, that was a kid’s only form of entertainment . . . now it’s a dying medium . . . You always wonder, how did these guys get noticed? ‘Cause they suck . . . These strips are pretty weird. Like Garfield? Why did the owner feed him lasagna? . . . And Beetle Bailey? How did he get in the Army? He’s retarded as hell . . . and Hagar the Horrible? He’s a Viking, he’s kind of a criminal, and yet we have to love this guy? And Dick Tracy, he chases weird villains with a little radio watch. You wonder how much they pay these guys to make these . . .

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Posted on October 7, 2013

Plus: Little Known Facts & Unsavory Kisses

1. Operation: Book Drop.
“The Chicago Teachers Union on Thursday, Oct. 3 will deliver more than 5,000 books to Chicago public schools as part of the American Federation of Teachers’ First Book National Book Bank,” the union says in a press release.
“Operation: Book Drop is a reading recovery and restoration initiative by the Union to keep the appreciation of literature at the forefront of education in schools that have suffered from severe budget cuts by the mayor’s office and Chicago Public Schools.
“CPS considers a school without a library if that school doesn’t have a teacher designated as a librarian. This year’s layoffs and budget cuts decimated librarian staff in a district that already lacked libraries in 160 schools. Nearly 190 elementary schools in CPS – more than 40 percent – do not currently have a teacher designated in a librarian position, according to CTU analysis of the district’s Sept. 5 position file.

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Posted on October 3, 2013

By The Guild Literary Complex

If urban design is the language of the city, where is the story – and who tells it? In the final reading of a two-part Applied Words series, the Guild Literary Complex invites writers to examine our relationships with the built environment.
“Re-Built” will take place on Saturday, October 19 from 2 – 4 p.m., in the “original” Sears tower at 930 S. Homan Ave, and is free to the public.
The venue, a 14-story brick tower in a Neo-Classical style, was once part of the world’s largest commercial building, a 3.3 million square foot warehouse for the old Sears Roebuck and Company.
Our feature reader, the award-winning playwright and librettist Sandra Seaton, worked her first summer job in the old Sears complex.
Her stories will be woven with the words of Nwaji B. J. Harris and Benjamin van Loon, and a complex narrative of many perspectives will be built “brick by brick.” Young authors from nearby Henry Ford Academy: Power House High will also contribute stories. The program commences with an open mic.

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Posted on September 30, 2013

Plus: Stories Inspired By Thorne Miniatures & Broken Windows

1. Sharks Are Sublime.
“Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and other authors of the Romantic era saw a special emotion in our recognition of nature’s terrifying side, the paradoxical pull of the imagery of pain and danger they called the sublime,” Edward Tenner writes for the Atlantic. “And no creature evokes this sense more vividly than the shark.
“Despite our fears, sharks are among the most negligible threats to human life. As the dust jacket of the award-winning National Geographic contributing photographer Thomas P. Peschak’s new book, Sharks & People: Exploring Our Relationship With the Most Feared Fish in the Sea, points out, fewer than a half dozen humans are killed each year by sharks, while we have been slaughtering 38 million of them annually.”

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Posted on September 26, 2013