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Kathy Griffin has signed a seven-figure deal with Flatiron Books. The comedienne plans to write a book entitled Kathy Griffin’s Celebrity Index A to Z.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Griffin (pictured, via) plans to share her thoughts on Hollywood celebrities and personal stories. The publisher has scheduled the release for Fall 2016.

Here’s more from The New York Daily News: “The funny lady released her autobiography, Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin in 2009, which debuted at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. The 55-year-old is no stranger to dishing on stars with her racy work on My Life on the D-List.” (via Yahoo! TV)

I’d never before read anything by Nancy Farmer (although as a former children’s bookseller, of course I knew about her) until I picked up A Girl Named Disaster to read as the first Tiger’s Choice. I was lucky to have found it–this book is an outstanding piece of fiction that can be read and enjoyed by a doddering fifty-nine-year-old like me or by people who are substantially younger.

In an earlier posting by Corinne on PaperTigers, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in the Philippines pointed out that children’s literature from different cultures is shaped by differing values. This is made intriguingly clear by the story of Nhamo, the girl who leaves her tribe in search of her one living parent and a family that will be truly hers. Her quest is an adventure, and a solitary one, that takes her into a world populated only by animals. Unlike similar stories written with a differing cultural perspective (Julie of the Wolves, My Side of the Mountain, Island of the Blue Dolphins), this book does not show an anthropomorphic relationship between Nhamo and the baboons who are her neighbors. A lonely and frightened child, Nhamo forges a relationship with a world of the spirits rather than with the animal kingdom. She sustains herself through stories that she knows and loves about beings of an unseen realm, and in her dreams and in her waking imagination, these are the figures that guide her, and who allow her to bring out menacing, and hitherto unexplored, parts of herself by cloaking them under different names and the persona of spirits.

Her three-part story begins with elements of Cinderella, sweeps into a Robinson Crusoe-like world, and ends with a modern-day transformation and the fulfillment of a quest. At almost 300 pages, it is longer than many pieces of fiction for children, and it contains an impressive body of information within its compelling story. Anyone who reads it will be given a sense of place that only someone who has lived in that part of Africa could provide.

It could be a problematic choice to read aloud to a classroom of boys and girls. Although Nhamo’s adventures, and her adventuresome spirit, will appeal to both genders, the author’s frankness when writing about menstruation and other physical functions could be difficult in a mixed-gender classroom if read aloud. It is, however, a dazzling choice for a parent-child book group, or to give to a reluctant reader, or to enjoy as a solitary pleasure when in need of something absorbing and magical to read.

A recent NEA study has confirmed what many teachers, librarians, and booksellers have realized for a long time. Reading for fun is a declining pleasure, reading scores are plummeting in the classroom, and many adults suffer from low basic reading skills.

This discovery has begun a spirited discussion over how a child becomes addicted to the printed word and grows into becoming a lifelong reader. National Book Award winner, Sherman Alexie, who grew up on a Native American reservation, says that the book that made him love reading was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.

“It was the first time that I looked at a book and saw a brown, black, beige character, a character who resembled me physically and spiritually, in all his gorgeous loneliness and splendid isolation. The younger you are when you do that, the more likely you’re going to be a serious reader.”

As readers, whether we’re children or adults or somewhere in between, we are drowning in print. Bookstores and libraries teem with books, many of which are simply not very good. Our choices are overwhelming and, as we choose how to spend our limited amounts of time and money, our risks are great. Who can blame those who look at all of the possibilities, sample one or two unsatisfying selections, give up, and turn to other diversions?

“What I find with readers today is that they don’t go off on their own to another book. They wait for the next recommendation,” remarked Jonathan Galassi of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. For those who love nothing better than finding something new to read and taking a chance on it, his observation is dispiriting.

How do people become passionate and fearless readers, who happily move on to the next book, whether it has received the blessings of Oprah or the Newbery Medal or not? What is the book that made you a person for whom books are as essential as oxygen? What is your earliest “book memory?” How do you encourage the children you know and love to know and love books?

This is a conversation that needs as many participants and perspectives as possible, and we’re eager to hear what you have to say. Let’s talk.