In recent years, educational surveys, sales data, and anecdotal evidence from teachers and librarians have all pointed to the same discouraging fact: that the share of kids ages nine and up reading for pleasure is at a record low. While diminished attention spans are often identified as the culprit, factors such as over scheduling, waning school library funding and staffing (often linked to book-banning campaigns), the rising cost of books, and a breakdown in book discovery each play a part.

My Adventures with God

Even though the novel takes place more than three decades ago, on the eve of the Rodney King riots, its debates about bigotry match today’s: the use of racial slurs in art, pervasive antisemitism, and ignorance as a denial tactic, to name a few. Considering the frequent bans of Huckleberry Finn, from the right and the left, since its first publication and Trump-era elimination of Black history education in many US school curricula, Huckleberry Jim feels especially well-timed—but, sadly, wouldn’t it always? Nelson honors the fathoms-deep American divisions that Twain marked and urges us to look closer rather than away.

South to Stowe -

Chicken Soup for The Recovering Soul

Five of the country’s largest book and journal publishers along with bestselling author Scott Turow have joined together to file a class action lawsuit against Meta and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, for willful infringement of millions of works, torrented via pirate sites, to develop Meta’s Llama large language models.

Childhood, Interrupted: PW Talks with Hannah Thurman

company specializing in shortform video, to co-produce a slate of 40 animated microdramas inspired by Harlequin Romance titles, beginning with Catherine Mann’s A Fairy-Tail Ending next month.

Hold the Phone

When I was a child, there were hardly any picture books in Greenlandic that mirrored our modern lives. To fill this void, in the late 2000s, I wrote my first children’s books in my native language, Greenlandic. I wanted my boys, and all Greenlandic children, to see themselves as the main characters—neither as props in history nor as caricatures—in stories honouring their cultural identity and their contemporary lives, set in their home environment. Joyful stories that take place today.

Chemistry has always been difficult to describe in words, and romance readers are increasingly turning to the graphic novel format, for its engaging blend of prose and illustrations. The massive popularity of series such as Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper and Rachel Smythe’s Lore Olympus are evidence that graphic novels are offering readers a refreshing way to dip into the genre. This spring, teens will see plenty of new romance graphic novels that span tropes and subgenres hitting shelves. We spoke with the creators of six forthcoming projects that display how the medium might just be the new literary fix for lovers of love.

 By Peter Johnson – born in England and lived in Canada many years.