Three Fairy Tales to Read After You Watch Beauty and the Beast

Did you see the Beauty and the Beast live action film yet? I recently did, and it made me think of all the fairy tale retellings that are published and made. Fairy tales were first told to teach children lessons; it wasn’t until Disney’s series of animated films like Snow White and Cinderella that they became more like the stories we see and hear today. That hasn’t stopped people from retelling them in a variety of ways. Here are three recent retellings that you may find interesting if you love Beauty and the Beast.



Celebrate Reading with the Reading Warriors!

Every day Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP) staff work to empower teens to be builders of their own future by connecting them to mentors, resources and opportunities that reflect their interests. This school year, CLP is thrilled to be collaborating with Neighborhood Learning Alliance (NLA) and its Reading Warriors program in which high school students act as reading mentors for elementary school children.



Best of BARD: March 2017

“Life comes at you fast”, Ferris Bueller once warned us, but he may have just as well been speaking about King James Patterson’s book releases. When he comes at us … Continued


Novels and Memoirs Told in Poetry

When most people think of poetry, they think of rhyming lines broken into stanzas that go on for about a page or so. Rarely do they think of the many novels, memoirs, and folktales told entirely in verse, whether it be formal (i.e. Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter) or free. These are often great places to start for those who find poetry intimidating or difficult to understand, as I once did.


How Bad Feminist Inspired My Writing

Recently, I finished reading Roxane Gay’s memoir, Bad Feminist, and I really enjoyed it. The memoir was funny and relatable. One example of this is when Gay mentions the fact that she feels that she’s a bad feminist because she loves rap music. Gay mentioned this a few times in the book, and I was thinking “Me too!”


A Dark Knight Reading List for After Hours: Cocktails and Kryptonite

In anticipation of After Hours: Cocktails and Kryptonite this Friday at CLP – Main, I thought I’d share some of my favorite Batman graphic novels. If you’re only familiar with the character from the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan films or—god forbid—the Joel Schumacher and Zack Snyder iterations, check out these reads on Hoopla.


Can You Judge a Song By Its Cover?

Previously, I posted a list of my favorite “guilty pleasure” songs. Today, I want to talk about covers. Sometimes they’re good; other times… not so much. Some are more popular than the originals. Then there are some songs, like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” that are so great they get covered over and over.