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Pic of the Week: James Baldwin’s “Little Man, Little Man”

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Aisha Karefa-Smart, James Baldwin’s niece, reads from a recently released edition of “Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood,” the only children’s book Baldwin wrote, at a Library of Congress panel discussion on Feb. 28, 2019. Karefa-Smart, a D.C.-based author, wrote the book’s afterword. The book was originally written in 1971, when Baldwin was …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

African-American History Month: ‘Native Son,’ Uncensored

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This post is republished from the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The entire issue is available online. In his classic novel “Native Son,” Richard Wright tells the story of a poverty-stricken young black man who takes a job as a chauffeur to a white family in Chicago, accidentally kills the daughter …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Rare Books: “A Child’s Garden of Verses”

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins. It coincides with the posting of additional illustrations from the Library’s 1895 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses” on the Library’s Pinterest site. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) spent his childhood in the cold and damp of Edinburgh, Scotland, his dedicated …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Did Galileo Own the Library’s Copy of ‘The Starry Messenger’?

Posted by: Carla D. Hayden

Asking intriguing questions can be a great way to encourage research and creative thinking. The answer to this particular question was at first disappointing. Two experts, a historian and a rare book librarian, both said that although Galileo wrote “The Starry Messenger,” he did not himself own the copy of the book now in the …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Inquiring Minds: Author Takes a Deep Dive into the Library

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Barb Rosenstock writes children’s books about people who have changed history — Ben Franklin, Theodore Roosevelt, Joe DiMaggio and racing legend Louise Smith among them. “The Noisy Paint Box,” her story about the artist Kandinsky, was a 2015 Caldecott Honor Book. In 2013, she published “Thomas Jefferson Builds a Library” about Jefferson’s massive book collection, …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

My Job at the Library: Cataloging Children’s Literature

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This interview with Ann Sullivan was first published in the September–October issue of LCM, the Library of Congress magazine. The issue is available in its entirety online. After reading the interview, make sure to take the quiz that follows! How would you describe your work? I catalog children’s books at the Library of Congress. This …