Literary Kids by Literary Features Syndicate

We’ve had a good run here at Literary Features Syndicate–over thirty years!–and we are eternally grateful to our loyal readers, to the publishing houses for furnishing us with great nourishment, and to the authors and illustrators who kindly shared their wisdom with us. Thank you. This site will now exist as a repository for prior work. But we’re not leaving the interwebs. Nick continues to…

The NFT Art Market Explained & How to Participate Safely

copyright Ali Sabet. Reproduced with permission of the artist Head on over to Art and Object and read all about how NFTs are rocking the art world, plus some pointers on how to collect these digital pieces.

University of Chicago Professor Named Sheikh Zayed Book Award Winner

Sweden’s got the Nobel, New York proffers the Pulitzer, France bestows the Goncourt, and the UAE has the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Perhaps the latter is unfamiliar to some readers out there–it was to me–but it is a prestigious literary prize which, since 2006, has recognized works dedicated to and written in Arabic. Professor Tahera Qutbuddin of the University of Chicago was recently awarded the…

Renato! by Eugene Mirabelli, McPherson & Company, $20, 577 pages. “The gods are immortal and we are not, and no, we are not free to live like gods. We die. We don’t want to be dispersed or dissolved into the void, we don’t want to lose each other.” Appearing in the waning pages of Eugene Mirabelli’s masterful multi-generational literary opera, Renato! these musings on the meaning of mortality…

“Too Small Tola” A Major Literary Treat

One of the most original children’s books to cross our desk so far this year is Too Small Tola ($15.99, 96 pages, ages 6-9) by Nigerian-born storyteller Atinuke, with delightful illustrations by Onyinye Iwu. Three short stories follow Tola, a girl living in an apartment in Lagos, as she navigates the hustle and flow of the bustling megacity. On marketing day, she and Grandmommy walk to the other…

A Perceptive Review of “Cross of Snow” in The Times Literary Supplement

The lead book review in today’s number of the TLS (Times Literary Supplement) is a lengthy, perceptive consideration of “Cross of Snow,” written by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, professor of Classics and English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and author of numerous monographs on nineteenth-century literature. Please take a look here!

Bronx Resident Bringing Mobile Bookstore to Borough

Lifelong Bronx resident Latanya Devaughn is on a mission to bring a bookstore on wheels to her borough. Now, after two years of soliciting donations for thousands books and funds via GoFundMe, Devaughn recently announced the acquisition of the bus that will bring her passion project closer to reality. We spoke earlier this week about her bibliophilic endeavor, the challenges posed by the…

Mac Barnett and Greg Pizzoli continue to turn out impeccably-cued books for young readers. "Jack Gets Zapped" is no exception. @macbarnett @gregpizzoli @penguinkids @VikingChildrens

Courtesy of Viking Books At this point in the pandemic, many of us living the WFH life may feel as though we’ve been sucked right into our computer screens. But we’re adults, supposedly capable of adjusting–just imagine how the millions of elementary schoolchildren are handling remote learning. Maybe you don’t have to imagine because you’ve got kids you’re helping navigate this strange,…

The Captain's Boy targets reluctant readers in a coming-of-age reminiscent of Johnny Tremain.

As America grapples with a battered democracy, it’s worth considering why these ideals are worth saving from rioters who would violently attempt to subvert them. Children certainly ought to have more than a superficial understanding of the tenets that hold this country together, but there’s no reason why that endeavor has to be purely didactic. Don Callaway’s recently published adventure, The…

Digging Things. Dan R. Lynch makes dinosaur hunting accessible to kids of all ages.

For paleontologists, the year 2020 was a big one: a nearly complete skeleton of Stan the T. rex sold at Christie’s for $31.8 million in October, and just last month the Brazilian Society of Paleontology announced a non-avian dinosaur specimen acquired in 1995 by a museum in southwestern Germany appears to be one of a kind and may have also been illegally exported. In short, there’s some exciting…

Below we offer a rundown of three titles to share with loved ones, and, given the givens of 2020, not a one deals with sleigh bells or other traditional trappings of the season. Yet each is a reminder that hope remains a powerful antidote to overwhelming despair. Hang in there folks, and stay safe.

For young adult fans of historical fiction: The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the…

A Beautiful Ending: Death and Heaven in the Time of Longfellow

From TB to typhus, 19th-century Americans faced death on a near-daily basis. Nick Basbanes explores how our forebears dealt with that “ever present existential threat” in the Summer issue of Humanities (aka, the pandemic issue), reproduced with permission below.

Originally published as “A Beautiful Ending” in the Summer 2020 issue of Humanities magazine, a publication of the National…

Read Here Nick Basbanes’s Introduction to The Newly Released Edition of The Classic Bibliomystery, “The Widening Stain,” from Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics

For your reading pleasure, reproduced below is Nick’s introduction to the newly released edition of the bibliomystery The Widening Stain, originally written in 1942 by W. Bollingbroke Johnson. Whodunnit? How about, who wrote it? Find out below–

Barry Moser Illustrates Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

“Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition…. I would pour out my soul’s complaint…— ‘You are loosed from your…

. @johnniewalker_ @pepsi Will Launch Paper Bottles in 2021 @Diageo_News #paperbottles #alcohol #sustainability #paper

I don’t know about you, dear readers, but it’s been nothing short of a miracle for me to focus on much other than the parade of horribles happening right now. Apparently it’s called doomscrolling? Who knew–probably most of you, right? In that vein, I needed something light and frothy for this post, something downright bubbly and comforting. Well, I think I found it (and feel free to email me if…

. #poetry in the time of corona: sonnets to soothe, courtesy of Daniel Mark Epstein #COVID19

“Where were you during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020,” will become a common query of us by generations to come. Some of us will respond with poetry–there’s been plenty of time to write, and America’s poets have answered Covid-19 with verse. Notably among them is Daniel Mark Epstein, who recently launched a series of sonnets created during the early days of the shelter-in-place order.

Dubbed “C…