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Category: Writers

Medium close up of a woman speaking on state. She's wearing a black top, white suit coat and glasses. She's smiling.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Live at the Library

Posted by: Maria Peña

At times laughing and tossing back her long sisterlocks, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson engaged in a lively discussion with U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves in the Coolidge Auditorium last week. She talked about her youth and life experiences, all included in her memoir, "Lovely One."

Book opened to two pages, showing woodcut of author on the left and title page on the right.

The First Children’s Picture Book Might Be This One

Posted by: Maria Peña

One of the first picture books for children was "Orbis Sensualium Pictus" ("Visible World in Pictures"), published by Johann Amos Comenius in 1658. Born in the present-day Czech republic, Comenius was a theologian and education reformer who believed in teaching children from a Christian perspective. His book, with 150 woodcut images, was popular across Europe for centuries. The Library has a 1664 edition published in London.

Embossed typsecript in gold and blue, with Hebraic writing alongside it.

Hundreds of Hebrew Manuscripts Now Online

Posted by: Maria Peña

The Library recently put online some 230 histortic manuscripts, some of them more than a thousand years old, in Hebrew and similar languages, such as Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and Yiddish. The collection, available online for researchers and the public for the first time, includes a 14th-century collection of responsa, or rabbinic decisions and commentary, by Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona, considered one of the most prominent authorities on Jewish law.