Books & Ideas
Take This Story and Sell It
Christine Witthon is a literary agent. In fact, she was recently named one of the top 30 literary agents in the United States.
And why is this information important to those on the Vineyard?
Well, turn down any dirt road, knock on any weather-beaten, cedar-shingled home and odds are you’ll find a writer moving words about the page and hoping for a big break.
Tonight, May 27, is a scribbler’s lucky evening.
The Zen of Award Winning
The lavish book of photography and essays, Martha’s Vineyard – Now & Zen, has been selected the bronze medal winner of the 2011 Indie Excellence Award in the category of Northeast Regional Publications.
This, the book’s second national award, celebrates the highest achievements in independent press and self-publishing.
FOUNDING GARDENERS: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation. By Andrea Wulf. Knopf, March 29, 2011. 352 pages. $30, hardcover.
At first glance this book, with its lovely old-style sketches of such flowers as Rhododendron maximum and Kalmia angustifolia, gives you the notion it would make the ideal gift for someone who knows her forsythia from Scotch broom. But the moment you start reading Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf (Knopf, $30), you realize something groundbreaking is going on — pun intended.
TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME. By Carly Simon (performer, author), Jack Norworth (author) and Amiko Hirao (illustrator). Imagine, a Charlesbridge Imprint. April 2011. 26 pages, hardcover. $17.95.
Imagine a 1908 Tin Pan Alley ditty that continues to be heard by tens of millions of Americans on a daily basis — at least during baseball season. Yes, the incredibly catchy Take Me Out to the Ballgame (by Jack Norworth), is the unofficial baseball anthem, and it gets the crowds roaring to the immortal lyrics:
Pearl Buck Returns
Once the weather turns warmer and the grey, spring skies blow blue and clear the Vineyard beckons to one and all. Time and the grave cannot even thwart the faithful. Pearl Buck is headed our way.
That’s right, on June 1 at 7 p.m. Ms. Buck will be reading from her short story collection East and West at the Vineyard Haven Public Library. Okay, the legendary author of The Good Earth may bear a resemblance to the actress Diane Quaid, but the words will be her own.
Babysitting Class
The American Red Cross will hold a babysitting class from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 21 at the YMCA on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.
The course is designed for sixth to ninth graders, ages 11 to 15. Participants will learn babysitting responsibilities, characteristics of children, supervising and playing with children, basic care such as feeding and changing, accident prevention, emergency action and first aid. The cost for the course is $60.