Julia Glass Picks Favorite Children's Books

National Book Award winner Julia Glass, who visits us on Thursday, April 3rd, picks her favorite underrated children's books in   Entertainment Weekly.

Here are two out of ten:

Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton: “For the precocious science nerd, page past the can-do life lesson of Burton’s Mike Mulligan to Life Story, a proscenium-stage drama that travels through time from the birth of the sun to human existence the way it looked about fifty years ago.”

Uncle Elephant by Arnold Lobel: (Pictured) “Frog and Toad can laugh at the Caldecotts; they’ve been on Broadway. Equally enchanting among Arnold Lobel’s characters, however, is Uncle Elephant, a perfect novel in miniature.”

More in EW:  http://shelf-life.ew.com/2014/03/17/julia-glass-criminally-underrated-books/

More about Julia's upcoming visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/glass_julia14.html

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Doris Kearns-Goodwin's Lincoln on Big Screen

Doris Kearns-Goodwin, a repeat guest at the Institute, is the author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which will coming to theaters in November 2012 as a movie directed by Stephen Spielberg, and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln [pictured here].

"And contrary to the rumors that often follow the There Will Be Blood star's methodology, the director says that his lead wasn't pretending to be Lincoln for months at a time. 'Daniel was always conscious of his contemporary surroundings,' Spielberg says. 'Daniel never went into a fugue state. He did not channel Lincoln. All that stuff is just more about gossip than it is about technique."

More about the film in Entertainment Weekly.

Kearns-Goodwin last visited us in 2009 to share the stage with former Governor Mario Cuomo and celebrate the New York State Writers Institute's 25th Anniversary.

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