Reading to young kids improves their social skills − and a new study shows it doesn’t matter whether parents stop to ask questions
Interested in developing empathy and creativity in her school-age children, Erin Clabough, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, compared two methods of reading aloud to children: (1) reading straight through the book, and (2) pausing at key points to ask children questions about the story. Her research suggests that either method boosts children’s empathy, while the second method generates “significantly more [creative] ideas overall.”
Dorothy Parker: Sharp-Witted Writer, Bitter Professor
“Dorothy Parker’s year as a visiting professor shows how a celebrated literary voice struggled to adapt to the realities of academic teaching.”
You’ve undoubtedly heard the adage “Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach.”
Dorothy Parker, known for her clever, satirical voice, certainly could write. But, according to this article, she certainly couldn’t teach—and apparently didn’t care that she couldn’t.
Top 10 Checkouts of All Time
In honor of its 125th anniversary, the New York Public Library had a team of experts evaluate “a series of key factors to determine the most borrowed books, including historic checkout and circulation data (for all formats, including e-books), overall trends, current events, popularity, length of time in print, and presence in the Library catalog.”
And the winners are . . .
The novel that changed my mind – ten experts share a perspective‑shifting read
“Our beliefs aren’t fixed. They’re shaped, stretched and sometimes overturned by the ideas we encounter as we move through life. For many of us, novels are the moments where that shift happens.”
Ten academic experts discuss “a work of fiction that has challenged their assumptions and changed their thinking in a lasting way.”
The Editor Who Helped Build a Golden Age of American Letters
“Malcolm Cowley championed Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey—and elevated the status of American writing.”
Greg Barnhisel, professor of English at Duquesne University, discusses the book The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature. Barnhisel calls The Insider:
a biography of the memoirist, critic, editor, teacher, and general “middleman of letters” who orbited the nucleus of American writing for almost 60 years. But at the same time, it is. Despite the fact that less than a third of The Insider concerns that golden age, the “triumph of American literature” that Howard exalts in his book’s subtitle is just that: the period when the publishing industry’s fortunes and the prestige and international reputation of American writing thrived in tandem. The story of Cowley’s career is a story not just of the convergence of generational literary talent but of a country refining the image it would present to the rest of the world.
Alas, as Barnhisel concludes:
Seventy years ago, Cowley helped establish American literature’s legitimacy, which gave cultural and intellectual heft to America’s audacious Cold War–era assertion of primacy on the world stage. This project, one might dryly observe, is no longer a national priority.”
Embrace Quirky: 5 Benefits of Using Animal Point-of-View Characters
When I originally came across this article, I said to myself, “I don’t care for fiction narrated by animals—except, of course, in literature for young children.”
But then I immediately thought: But what about Watership Down? I loved it once I finally got around to it in my late adulthood. And what about The Art of Racing in the Rain? I loved that one, too, and sat having myself a good cry when I turned the last page.
Here writer Erin Radniecki lists 5 reasons why animal protagonists can be so appealing, even after we’ve left childhood behind.
Stacey Lee on Gothic Fiction and YA Books That Make You Sit with Discomfort
YA writer Stacey Lee, author, most recently, of Heiress of Nowhere, talks about “the wild, wonderful, and unexpected world of writing a work of Gothic fiction” and shares “some of her favorite books that force readers to sit with discomfort.”
While writing Heiress of Nowhere, she “realized the gothic isn’t necessarily about ghosts. It’s about pressure—feeling watched or boxed into a space you can’t quite escape.” She said she came to recognize this feeling from her experience as “a Chinese girl growing up in America.”
I was especially struck by her insight about why “teens connect so deeply to gothic stories”:
Adolescence is one big shadowy mansion: parts of your life are locked away from you, adults are watching, and the rules feel arbitrary. You’re supposed to find yourself while staying firmly within a boundary someone else drew. The gothic simply makes that atmosphere literal.
This recognition is straight out of life story psychology; adolescence is the time when individuals are most actively searching to assert their unique identity while at the same time trying to find their niche within society.
© 2026 by Mary Daniels Brown
