I used to work three miles from my favorite comics shop in uptown Phoenix, and I could pop over at lunchtime on Wednesday or Thursday as soon as the new issues came out. Then the bad economic situation forced the city to reduce library hours again, and I wound up being transferred from my [...]

I was born to have adventure. Sometimes I forget that, but then something will happen that forces me to remember. Lately it has been dancing. Son Corencio–he who is taking the Salsa course at Arizona State University–and I went dancing last Friday night for the fourth time in a little over a month. We returned [...]

There is so much good stuff published for Young Adults these days.  There was really nothing like it back in the day when I was a teenager.  In those days I searched libraries and bookstores for any kind of ancient fantasy that the world had forgotten, because there wasn’t anything new for readers like me. [...]

Don’t Take Your Brain to the Movies             (Medusa the Huntress-best monster in the movie)   Last Sunday (April 11) I got to see Clash of the Titans—regular old 2D in my neighborhood movie theater. I took my son and his best friend—they are the ones who really wanted to see it.   I had read [...]

Brom. THE CHILD THIEF; a novel. HarperCollins, c2009. 481 p.  illus.               No Captain Hook. No Tinkerbelle. No Wendy and her brothers in pajamas. No pirates and no Indians. No flying. No third star to the right and straight on till morning. No Neverland.  Brom’s 2009 novel, THE CHILD THIEF, is Peter Pan as [...]

Libraries are cool. Enter a new library, and you never know what you’ll find. The City of Phoenix (more properly Library Administration) switched me from the tiny community Century branch to the large, extremely busy Palo Verde branch last week.  I picked up lots of new duties as a librarian, and I’ve found all kinds [...]

              I have always liked Barbara Gordon. I liked her when she was Batgirl fifty years ago in my youth, and I like her now as Oracle. What is not to like? Smart, tough, red-haired, voluptuous, and at one time a librarian—my perfect woman. Since the Joker’s bullet shattered her spine and made her [...]