It’s a universally familiar phrase. Ask any English-speaking adult or child, and they will recognize the label “goody two-shoes” as derogatory shorthand for an insufferable prude—but few remember how ...

There is a disjunction at the heart of children’s literature. It is that the placing of words and brushstrokes, the arranging of every publishing deal and the selling and buying of every book, is ...

There is something important in reading or listening to true stories about people who have accomplished great things under difficult circumstances. Such stories often provide the reader/listener with ...

Seeing the cover of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981) has a powerfully Proustian effect on me: my stomach drops a little bit and a shiver of twinned fear and delight runs down ...