Authors

Alicia Baladan: “Una Storia Guaraní”

Alicia Baladan is an Italian illustrator whose work has given me yet another reason for massively improving my Italian. I love this work — with its beautiful palette of colors and evocative imagery. Her latest children’s book “Una Storia Guaraní” is about the Guaraní Indians of Uruguay and their sacred and incredibly useful relationship to […]

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Marly Youmans and Clive Hicks-Jenkins Collaboration: Thaliad

  Marly Youmans' Thaliad offers a healing balm to the swath of nihilistic post-apocalyptic fiction for young adults. Told in free verse reminiscent of heroic epics (Homer meets Gerald Manley Hopkins), Thaliad recounts the aftermath of a fiery apocalypse and the perlious journey of a band of children led by a girl whose prophetic visions

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The Splendor Of Shopping: Emile Zola and Au Bonheur Des Dames (The Ladies’ Delight)

I have just finished a conference where we read and discussed in great depth Emile Zola's novel, Au Bonheur Des Dames (The Ladies Delight.) The novel, set in the late 1860's, centers on the invention of the department store (based on the historical store Bon Marché in Paris). The owner Mouret — a scoundrel and

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John Turturro And Italo Calvino: Italian Folktales On The Stage And On Film

Actor John Turturro has acquired the rights to create a filmed version of Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales (perhaps my all time favorite fairy tale collection). Last year, Turturro tested the waters so to speak with a new play "Fiable Italiano" adapted from Calvino's collection. It was performed before sold out audiences in Turin, Naples and

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Youaltepoztli: The Night Hatchet

“The strangest of all the phantasms described is, perhaps, the Youaltepoztli, literally, “the night hatchet or axe.” It manifested itself by causing loud intermittent sounds resembling those produced by the blows of an axe in splitting wood. These ominous sounds were audible at dead of night in the mountains, and inspired terror, for they were

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