Birthday Book Recs 26/50 : TalkTalk: A Children’s Book Author Speaks to Grown-Ups by E.L. Konigsburg
TalkTalk by E.L. Konigsburg
Birthday Book Recs: 26/50
TalkTalk: A Children’s Book Author Speaks to Grown-Ups by E.L. Konigsburg
Oh, my heart! Sorry to be dramatic, but it’s true: My heart swells when I revisit this book. What a smart, smart woman E.L Konigsburg was.
You (hopefully) know her as the author of Newbery-winner From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which — if you don’t know — is a brilliant children’s novel (I guess they’d call it YA now, and I have some thoughts about genre naming but that’s for another time) about a brother and sister who run away to the Met and then proceed to solve a mystery about the creator of a sculpture. She wrote so much more, but Mixed-Up Files is an absolute classic — the kind of book that makes a kid feel daring (“I’d like to spend the night in a museum too!”) and understood all at once.
I’m including some excerpts from TalkTalk below. I think it’s available only as an ebook these days; I was lucky enough to stumble across this first edition in a used bookstore in Boone about 20 years ago.
Again, what a smart, smart woman she was. When you understand how fascinating and well-articulated her speeches to adults were, you can see the brilliance and care with which she relayed similar messages to the throngs of children she wrote for.
You can find all my 50th Birthday Book Recommendations HERE.
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