“It’s so heavy!”             Everyone who has held my shiny new IPPY medal has had the same reaction. “Well, it IS a metal,” I say smugly. “Bronze.” I leaven the comment with a smile because I, too, was surprised by the heft and by the honor of winning a national Independent Book Publisher’s Award for [...]

In honor of the birthday of Theodore Giesel (aka Dr. Seuss), today is READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY. We hope that you will celebrate by sharing a book!

 “Hello? Is this Kathleen K’-ah-mumble??” The voice on the phone is often elderly and always insecure. “Yes,” I chuckle (warmly, I hope.) “This is Kathleen Kudlinski.” “Are you the Naturalist?” they ask, if they’ve been reading my newspaper column. The question “Are you the author?” means they’re a teacher, librarian, or child who has read [...]

I’ve just been reading about “Daddy and Me,” a small project at Rikers Island prison designed to encourage male inmates to read to their kids on family visit days. It’s not an easy task – the fathers often have to take a literacy class beforehand to learn how to read aloud to a child: nice [...]

I go to the hangar with Tim where he builds his airplane and I build a story.  Who would have thought there are so many similarities with building a plane and a story?  I guess because both are crafting, they just use different tools.  The grinders are grinding and the sparks are flying and compressors [...]

Projections for the opening weekend of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows indicate that the Harry Potter movies will soon surpass Star Wars as the highest grossing film franchise. Reactions from children’s book authors will most likely be mixed. While some may fear that time and money spent in movie theaters means less spent reading [...]