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Amitha Jagannath Knight

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Get to Know Asian American Children’s Authors: Padma Venkatraman, Author of A Time to Dance

Jun 23, 2014
2 min

Get to Know Asian American Children’s Authors: Padma Venkatraman, Author of A Time to Dance

Our very first author in this blog series is the award-winning and versatile author, Padma Venkatraman. Her latest book is A Time to Dance. (Side note: I absolutely love this cover and have already purchased my copy of the book!) Padma kindly answered 3 questions for me about her writing. Padma Venkatraman: I identify with all my protagonists: Vidya of CLIMBING THE STAIRS because I had to fight just as she had while growing up, because of my gender; Uido in ISLAND’S END becau

Feb 1, 2011
3 min

Ambiguous Endings: Brilliant or Lazy?

Due to the nature of this blogpost, there will be spoilers for The Giver and for Inception (the movie). So consider yourself forewarned. I recently saw Inception for the second time and it made me think again about ambiguous endings. At the end of Inception, the filmmaker doesn’t say specifically what happens in. We’re left wondering: Did the main character get home? Or was he still dreaming? I found myself looking for “clues”, like “The top stopped spinning in this segment b

My Reading Stats for 2010

Jan 10, 2011
2 min

My Reading Stats for 2010

So I thought I’d get the ball rolling again by doing an easy post about my book numbers for 2010 (here’s last year’s). I got my Kindle 2 in February 2009 and since then, I have definitely been converted to e-books. I looove e-books. I do like p-books (i.e. physical books) now and then, mostly for those that look really pretty or have lots of nice pictures (graphic novels, picture books, board books), but when I want to read a novel, I always check and see if I can get a copy

Monkey See Monkey Read

Biased Review of a Fabulous Essay: From Words to Brain by Livia Blackburne

Dec 20, 2010
1 min

Biased Review of a Fabulous Essay: From Words to Brain by Livia Blackburne

What happens when you read? How does your brain derive meaning from words on a page? My writing buddy Livia, attempts to answer these questions by explaining some of the latest in neuroscience research in a way that will interest science buffs, writers, and readers alike (not that these groups are mutually exclusive :) ). I may be biased because Livia is my friend (and I got to read and comment on some of the early versions!) but this is a highly fascinating read. Definitely

Oct 4, 2010
3 min

My epiphany: it’s about the writing, stupid

After almost two and a half years of writing full time, I’ve finally realized that I need to write. It’s not about being published for me, it’s actually about the stories and the writing process. If I go several days without writing anything, I get antsy. I feel like something is missing, like I’ve forgotten something, left something behind. This Saturday morning, after nearly three days of going without writing something meaningful (by which I mean something that wasn’t a bl

Sep 20, 2010
1 min

10 Reasons Why Books are Better than TV

I blog a lot about books and a lot about TV. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good TV show as much (or maybe more) than the next girl, but here are 10 reasons why I love books much better. 1) If you tell people you read a lot of books, you sound smart. Tell them you watch a lot of TV and you…don’t. 2) When reading a book, you get to choose who to cast. Don’t like Robert Pattinson as Edward? Choose someone else! (Or you can cast him in all the parts if you like…) 3) No commercials

Sep 9, 2009
2 min

Last 20 highlights from my Kindle

One thing I like about my Kindle is its ability to highlight passages/words and view them outside of the book in a separate file. I use this feature to highlight words that I ended up looking in the dictionary and to highlight quotes that I liked. My 10 most recent highlighted words: (unedited so you get to see how lame my vocabulary is) From Cranford by Eiizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell: 10. Quondam 9. Epistolary 8. baize From Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: 7. Titi

Aug 3, 2009
2 min

computer voice vs audiobook

Pregnancy brain has basically turned my mind into mush. My writing abilities have declined as has my drive to write. It’s been quite frustrating really. I spend all day in a daze, feeling like a bubble-brain who is annoying to be around. With the nausea that comes a long with it, all I have been able to do some days is sit on the couch and play facebook games or watch TV. Bleh. Even reading a book often feels like involves too much concentration. So this brings me to a point…

Jul 20, 2009
1 min

What makes a good beach read?

NPR has posted the 200 finalists for their “100 Best Beach Books” vote. But rather than this being a useful list of books I might want to take on vacation, it reads like a random assortment of people’s favorite books. The list ranges from “Bridget Jones’s Diary” to “Ender’s Game” to “War and Peace” and for me, very few of them are actually beach books. For me a beach book is light and fluffy, yet attention grabbing as well and many of these books don’t fit the bill (Anna Kare

Jun 11, 2009
1 min

A book unfinished

I used to feel bad about putting a book once I’d started reading it, but now it doesn’t bother me. I might feel a little bad if it’s something one of my friends enjoyed, but if i really don’t like a book, I refuse to force myself to read it. To me that’s just not what reading is about. This new policy though has resulted in an ever growing list of unfinished books some of which I did enjoy and do intend to go back to some day. Anyone else have opinions about this? Do you feel

May 14, 2009
4 min

How do I love to read? Let me count the ways…

I like to read. A lot (have you noticed?). Since I have gotten a Kindle, I’ve been paying more attention to the buzz around e-books. It seems like everyone is talking about how the publishing industry will need to change to keep up with the digital revolution. Are books going to go the way of the music industry (pirating exists but people still make loads of money off of mp3s)? Or the newspaper (people are used to getting news instantly/for free on TV or the internet and no l

Jun 23, 2008
1 min

Comfort Books

The Porter Square Books blog poses an interesting question: What are you favorite comfort books? Here are a few of mine: Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper Bridget Jones’s Diary Pride and Prejudice Lord of the Rings series anything by Marian Keyes I think the Harry Potter books will be on my list too someday. It’ll probably be a while though. I think I see a pattern emerging here for me: children’s fantasy and adult chick lit. What are your comfort books? #chicklit #

Jun 11, 2008
2 min

2008 Kids and Family Reading Report from Scholastic

Taken directly from Scholastic’s “2008 Kids and Family Reading Report”: Scholastic and Yankelovich conducted a survey to examine the factors shaping children’s relationship with reading now, and as we progress through the 21st century. The key findings of the research, based on interviews with 501 children age 5-17 and their parents or guardians (1000+ total respondents) in 25 cities across the country, are as follows: Kids & Reading 1) A majority of kids say they like to re

Apr 15, 2008
1 min

Everyone says that no one reads anymore…is that true?

Can it be true? I don’t know. I still read and look forward to reading, and I’m someone who spends way too much time browsing the web. Even when I was in high school and everyone was starting to go online, I still read books and loved most of the books I was required to read for English class. I just went to the NESCBWI conference and the SCBWI NY conference before that and at both conferences, there were record numbers of attendees. So how can there be more aspiring kid’s b