Mabel’s Fables, one of Toronto’s few remaining independent bookstores, almost 32 years old and specializing in books for children and young adults is facing a 70% rent increase that will soon force it to close.
I will be the first to admit that there is a minority of fans that take their fandom to the extreme. They are highly emotional, and sometimes volatile. Yet, the majority of fans are good people who enjoy works of fiction and are loyal to the creators, companies and brands that have brought them enjoyment throughout their lifetime.
Musicians know this term well: “Develop your ear.” In its simplest form, it is the ability to hear what is going on inside of the music – it goes beyond just understanding the melody and the rhythm section. Musicians who develop this ability quickly mature and often take their playing to a higher level of artistry.
Irish stained-glass artist and book illustrator Henry Clarke lived a short but creatively fruitful life.
Kay Nielsen is an illustrator from the era of Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Though equally as talented, for most of his career he remained in the shadows of these two giants.
Writers can get attached to their syntax and feel that their way of writing the world is better than possible alternatives, simply because that writing is theirs. Often that does not turn out to best serve the author’s work.
How many writers have sat at their keyboard, or at a desk with a pad of paper, pen in hand, trying to figure out the story arc for their protagonist? For some of us it’s an easy task, for others it’s a brain cramping event.
Mercer Mayer is highly accomplished author and illustrator of children’s books, whose work I have enjoyed immensely for many years.
We will never get back the hours of time we lose every day on social media.
I feel that in many forms of media, the features that make characters interesting, unique and multi-dimensional are being lost to anxieties about diversity and inclusion checklists.
Miyamoto Musashi is perhaps Japan’s most celebrated swordsman. He is a historical figure whose exploits have reached mythic proportions.
My early years were spent living in Manhattan. New York, for anyone who has never visited, is a city to be seen on foot. You can walk everywhere; there is always something or someone to see.