【推荐1】A symbol of a booming children’s book market is a self-styled “kaleidoscope (万花筒) of creative genius for kids”, the magazine Scoop, a startup based in Dalston, east London, which the author Neil Gaiman has described as “the kind of magazine I wish we’d had when I was eight.”

Scoop is the idea of the publisher Clementine Macmillan-Scott. A year ago, hers looked like an impossible venture. But against the odds for little magazines, Scoop has survived. Macmillan-Scott said, “I really wasn’t certain we would get to this point, but we are now approaching our first birthday.” She links the magazine’s fortunes to a prosperous market and reports that “through the hundreds of children, parents and teachers we speak to at our workshops, we know that children are greedy for storytelling.”

Inspired by an Edwardian model, Arthur Mee’s Children’s Newspaperr, Scoop is a mix of innovation and creativity. Establishment heavyweights such as the playwright Tom Stoppard, plus children’s writers such as Raymond Briggs, author of Fungus the Bogeyman, have adopted its cause. The magazine has also given space to 10-year-old writers and pays all contributors, high and low, the same rate — 10p a word.

It’s a winning formula. Macmillan-Scott reports “a quarterly sales increase of roughly 150% every issue”, but is cautious about her good fortune. “It’s all too clear to us that these children are hungry for print.”

Scoop focuses on the most profitable part of the children’s market, Britain’s eight to 12-year-old readers. In literary culture, this is the crucial bridge between toddlers (儿童) and adolescents and its publisher knows it. Macmillan-Scott is committed to listening to readers aged eight to 12, who have an editorial board where they can express their ideas about the magazine. “If we don’t get these children reading,” she says, “we will lose out on adult readers. To be fully literate, you have to start as a child.”

Macmillan-Scott argues against the suggestion that reading is in decline. “If you look at our figures,” she objects, “you’ll find that children do read and that Scoop is part of a craze for reading hardback books. Kids love paper and print. They might play games on a digital device, but they prefer not to read on a Kindle. The real market for e-books is among young adult readers.” Some of her evidence is anecdotal, but her sales figures and readership surveys support a picture of eight to 12-year-olds absorbed in books.

“What our research shows beyond question,” she says, “is that children have a love for reading that’s not seriously threatened by other kinds of entertainment. Reading for pleasure is a very real thing at this age, and the worries that some adults have about children losing interest in reading are simply not grounded in reality.”

【推荐2】Best Books for Children 2024

Who’s Cute? by Camilla Reid

Meet the cute woodland creatures in the forest and find out which is the cutest. Will it be the tiny, baby rabbit, the little mouse or the young, wide-eyed owl? An adorably illustrated board book for babies and toddlers with a surprise mirror ending, Who’s Cute? will be read and enjoyed time and again.

Keep Smiling by Floella Benjamin

Vina is known for her smile; her mum says that sharing it is the best gift she can give. But the day she starts her new school, Vina finds that her smile has mysteriously disappeared. As she searches for it all over the school, she learns that sometimes happiness is found in the most unexpected places. With its message of positivity, this book offers a great starting point to help young children to talk about their feelings.

The Little Mermaid by Campbell Books

Dive in the sea with this best-loved fairy tale, The Little Mermaid. This board book’s push, pull and turn mechanisms give little hands many surprises to discover as they follow the underwater adventures. Nneka Myers’ bright, bold illustrations of the little mermaid, the prince, the sea witch (巫师) and many more favorite characters will attract babies and toddlers as you read the story together.

I’m Not Scary! by Rod Campbell

A fun touch-and-feel mini-beasts story from Rod Campbell, creator of the preschool lift-the-flap classic, Dear Zoo. Join in the fun by touching a scritchy-scratchy grasshopper, a shiny beetle and even a slimy snail in I’m Not Scary!, an interactive touch-and-feel book, packed full of favorite bugs and mini-beasts. But will you be brave enough to touch all the creatures?

【推荐3】In some ways, every book is about the body. No one lives apart from theirs, and here are the books in my favorite list.

An analysis of physical suffering that spans from philosophy to medicine, religion to literature, and art, The Body in Pain shows an expansive study of the ways that human beings faced pain and to live with and through it.

This extraordinary novel about a small-town librarian named Peggy Court and the “over-tall” James Carlson Sweatt – who is six feet by age 11, then seven, and then eight – is a love story above all else. But it’s also an examination of the profound ways a body can connect you, and of how you can love a body even as it fails you.

This book turns the “illness narrative” inside out. A record of the years she spent with a rare and unpredictable blood disorder, the book displays an experience of illness in the language, shape, and timescale of sickness itself.

A poetry collection rooted in a series of birth disabilities that affect the author’s legs and feet, and in a lifetime of treatment, Nevison’s book is an act of myth-making, meaning-making and survival. “If your daughter is born / and her legs aren’t made / for standing,” the collection begins – and a whole, extraordinary world unfolds.

【推荐1】You’ve ordered a new pair of shoes online. They arrive; you rush to the front door and carry the box as you open it. You untie the laces, guide them toward your feet and they don’t fit.

So, back in the box they go and an hour later you drop them at the local collections store. It’s disappointing. The shoes have never been worn and they’ll be making their way to a new home soon. Right? Wrong.

What does happen to our goods when we order online and then return them? The reality is that much of it simply ends up in landfill (垃圾场). Each year, 5 billion pounds of waste is generated through returns in the world. In the US alone, customers return approximately 3.5 billion products, of which only 20% are actually faulty according to Optoro, a company which specializes in tackling the returns.

It turns out that returns create a real headache for companies. Many companies simply don’t have the technology to handle these faults in returned goods, so it is often most profitable for them to sell them cheaply to discounters via a web of shipping, driving and flying them around the globe, or to simply truck them to the dump.

Optoro’s software helps retailers (零售商) and manufacturers resell unsold goods more easily. They offer a number of options for retailers, including a website to resell their goods, called Blinq, as well as helping with re-routing goods to donation, store shelves, Amazon or eBay. They estimate their work helps reduce landfill waste by 70%.

Ann Starodaj, Senior Director of Sustainability at Optoro, says that while consumer habits might still be harmful, creating a profitable and environmentally friendly fashion model from start to finish is the way forward. “I don’t think people are going to stop buying stuff, but creating a business model where you’re making it easier for them to make sustainable choices is very important.”

【推荐1】This spring’s best page-turners

Run Towards the Danger

by Sarah Polley

Director and actor Sarah Polley last examined her personal history in her 2012 documentary, Stories We Tell. Her first book, a collection of biographic (传记的) essays, reconstructs her difficult childbirth, injuries, stage fright, and how she deals with these memories in order to move past them.

The Candy House

by Jennifer Egan

This new novel involves many of the same characters as Egan’s 2011 bestseller, A Visit from the Goon Squad. The new novel describes a social media network which allows users to upload and download their memories using futuristic technology. Egan lives up to her unpredictable reputation, writing chapters as series of tweets, emails and dialogues.

Trust

by He man Diaz

Anyone in need of an escape from reality will enjoy Diaz’s story set in the 1920s. It’s about Benjamin and Helen Rask, a pair of wealthy, strange business people in Jazz Age New York whose tricks and secrets threaten to destroy their lives.

This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub

Emma Straub’s novels offer fresh twists (转折) on the everyday relationships that form the glue of our lives. Her latest adds a fantasy to the mix. Alice is a middle-aged school admissions officer who’s transported back into her 16-year-old body, giving her the opportunity to reconnect with her father and correct the mistakes that separated them.

【推荐3】When asked in 1993 to comment on accusations that the movie In the Name of the Father distorts （曲解） contemporary British and Irish history, female lead Emma Thompson responded that she couldn't care less. Even since the premiere （首映） in 1915 of The Birth of a Nation, filmmakers have rewritten history to create top-dollar entertainment. The films are very persuasive: well-made movies hold your interest continuously, drawing your attention to “what happens next,” and pulling you forward with no time to reflect on individual scenes until the final credits roll. The result: you don't remember much about a movie after watching it for the first time. For this reason, movies have extraordinary power - unmatched by any other medium - to leave you with a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, who is bad and who is good, even though critical details presented in the movies may be false.

Well, so what? They're just movies. In fact they're not just movies. Millions of Americans are devoted history lovers, and they pack theatres every time new movies about historical figures or events come to town. Saving private Ryan and Titanic drew viewers and cash for months. Many high school teachers screen movies in the classroom. Clearly countless Americans get most of their history from television and the big screen.

Some of the industry's finest historical and period films premiered during the past decades. But the 1960s also saw a number of politically charged history-based movies full of factual distortions and, occasionally, outright lies. Today the trend continues on a larger scale: many movies released in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21*t century reflect lack of respect for solid, reliable history.

History Goes to the Movies is a source of information and, it is hoped, entertainment for everyone interested in the actual history behind a wide selection of movies grouped into twelve sections--11 covering historical periods and events and twelfth containing biographies and period films. Each movie review includes an essay on the history covered in one or more movies, and a brief plot summary. Star ratings (five stars: don't miss it) reflect each movie's historical accuracy and - to a much lesser extent --- its power to amuse.

Obviously, expecting textbook accuracy from movies would be ridiculous-and producers have delivered a remarkable number of historically faithful movies. But some of them get too much of their history wrong. History Goes to the Movies is a guide, however imperfect, for readers and viewers aiming to get it right.