Something Else About Sugar Loaf

Sending fun!

Something About Wenonah

Story of a statue.

Something About the Color Purple

Flat Tyre.

Something About Usborne’s Supernatural World

Nightmare fuel.

Something About Surplus Gorey Stuff

Buy in bulk and save.

Memoriam: Beverly Cleary

Children's book author Beverly Cleary (1916-2021), creator of Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins, has died at age 104.  

The first of her 30-plus books was Henry Higgins, published in 1950, and was followed five years later by Beezus and Ramona (1955). Ramona Quimby would later star in eight novels and become one of Cleary's most-popular and beloved characters.  

Cleary won the American Library Association's Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for "a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children" in 1975, was awarded the National Book Award for children's fiction in 1981 for Ramona and Her Mother, and the the 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw.

Her characters, including Henry Huggins, Beezus and Ramona Quimby, Ellen Tebbits, and Otis Spofford, as well as Ribsy, Socks, and Ralph S. Mouse, have delighted children for generations.

Something About March Hares (and Very Extended Connections)

Far from the warren crowd.

Something About the Streaming House

Flick of the wrist.

Something About Inverse Images

Positively strange.

Something About the Number of Possible Chess Moves

Maybe I should Stick to Twenty Squares!

Something About the Lewis Chessmen with Irving Finkle

44 More Squares Than Twenty Squares!

Something About Adaptations of Little Faithfulness

Action?

Something About the Hot Zone

Bad Knight.

Something About Rocks Village

Off the beaten path.

Something About Lost in Michigan

Look around you!

Something About Pyewacket

Nine lives, or some such.

Cover Critic: The House with a Clock in its Walls (Italy, 1988)

Cover Critic is our periodic survey of readers and fans about the various artwork and illustrations of the books in the Bellairs Corpus.

Something About Eight Guys Who Killed Julius Caesar

Superb banquets, indeed.

Something About an Ancient Roman Stylus

Post scriptum.

Something About Necromancy

'Till the mourning comes.

Something About the Timing of "Treasure"

Anthony’s adventures begin.

Something About Puffin Paperbacks in the 1990s

Auk words.

BiblioFile: Puffin Publishes Barnavelt (Part 2)

I see a decade has passed since the blog promised a follow-up about Puffin Books publishing the Lewis Barnavelt series.  The post was near completion so I’ll give it a go and get this one out there.

Memoriam: Norton Juster

Author Norton Juster died March 8. He was 91.

An architect by training, Juster was best known as an author of children's books, notably The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) and The Dot and the Line (1963). 

Tollbooth is a children's fantasy adventure about a bored young boy named Milo. After unexpectedly receiving a magic tollbooth and, having nothing better to do, Milo drives through it in his toy car, transporting him to the Kingdom of Wisdom. There, he acquired two faithful companions, a dog named tock and the humbug, and tried to restore to the kingdom its exiled princesses — named Rhyme and Reason — from the Castle in the Air.

The book, with illustrations by Jules Feiffer, remains acknowledged as a classic of children's literature.

Something About Extended Library Fines

Ex library.

Something About March 8

Day 67, for those keeping track.

Time Capsule: March 8, 1991

From the March 9, 1991 edition of the Haverhill Gazette:

Something About Corduroy Trousers

Whoosh-Whoosh-Flap.

Remembering ... Thirty Years

In a Jan. 16, 1968, letter to his friend, John Drew, John Bellairs wrote:

And tomorrow I will be thirty. My goodness, you will say, life is short.

And tomorrow he will have been gone thirty years.

My goodness life is short.

Cheers, John.

30 years gone. John Bellairs was my favorite author when I was a kid, and it’s been one of my life’s joys sharing his books with my own kids. https://t.co/7z6YWgumsd pic.twitter.com/vKyqdGrdCA

— Adam 12 (@adamxii) March 9, 2021

Something About Travels of the Time Trolley

All I wanted to do, was play my lute and sing.

Something About the Introduction of Lewis Barnavelt

Enter the hero.

Something About Bellairs in Bristol: A Pimm and Proper Residence

For refuge straight to Bristol!

Something About What If

Hypothesis unbound.

Something About Word of Mouth Promotion

Getting the word out.