By Micah McCrary

“More than fifty percent of the people in our city have low or limited literacy skills,” says Erin Walter, Literacy Director of Open Books in Chicago. “And sixty-one percent of low-income families nationwide have no children’s books at home.” Walter sits alongside Becca Keaty, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, and Stacy Ratner, Executive Director, in the soon-to-be-opened bookstore, which will house between 40,000 and 50,000 books by its grand opening November 21-22.

The store’s multicolored walls with inspirational and clever quotes like “He that loves reading has everything within his reach” resemble a painting of easter eggs, and ubiquitous shelves of purple, orange, green, pink and blue stand in ordered chaos, all of which can hold up to 60,000 books in total. In the children’s section, which is divided off by a standalone wall built to look like the front of a house, book clouds—donated books that have been painted to look like clouds in the sky—hang from a cerulean ceiling. A faux fireplace lounge hosts a wall covered by tiles purchased, customized and donated by both volunteers and by others who support the literary venture of Open Books. Read the rest of this entry »

By Brian Costello

I’ve been doing readings in, out, and around Chicago for nine years now. Thax Douglas, who ain’t dead yet, contrary to what the blogosphere was eager to tell you, helped out with my first reading. It was in the basement of Myopic Books. The story I read, an endless, meandering tale of two Peoria dads observing their sons’ Little League game in the thickest of “El-a-noy” accents, bombed, but the Schlitz and Swiss Cake Rolls I brought with me were a big hit among the transients who attended.

My next reading went a little bit better. I had befriended 2ndHand editor Todd Dills—a steadfast champion of this city’s literary scene if there ever was one—who published an essay I had written, a comparative study of crates vs. barrels. I read this at the Empty Bottle while setting off a squirt gun in the pocket of my khaki pants to make it look like I was pissing myself as I read. Read the rest of this entry »

Local author James Kennedy, whose first book, “The Order of Odd-Fish,” was listed as one of Smithsonian’s Notable Books for Children in 2008, will read from and sign his book at Quimby’s Bookstore this Friday at 7pm. In his blog, Kennedy writes about his habit of leaving things unfinished, something he feels helped him with this book. “The thing that kept me going is that no matter what job I was doing I only had confidence in that I would be a writer and I spent most of my free time working on that,” he says. “All the various jobs and interests I had…and failed at were all the things the story ended up being about.” “The Order” has been described as a combination of J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, Lemony Snicket and several others, but Kennedy says his inspiration comes mostly from adult authors like James Joyce. “I don’t read as much children’s and young adult literature as I should,” he says. “…['Ulysses'] was a novel that was all about one day and one city and I liked the idea. By the end of the book you have this idea of a real feeling of Dublin as a real organism…I wanted to do a book about a city.” Kennedy is currently working on “The Magnificent Moots, a story he describes as a mix of A Wrinkle in Time,” “Ender’s Game,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and plans to eventually write sequels to “The Order of Odd-Fish.” (Beth Wang)