Velocity of Being A

A Brain Pickings Best Children's Book of the Year An embarrassment of riches. —The New York TimesAn expansive collection of love letters to books libraries and reading from a wonderfully eclectic array of thinkers and creators.In these pages some of today's most wonderful culture-makers—writers artists scientists entrepreneurs and philosophers—reflect on the joys of reading how books broaden and deepen human experience and the ways in which the written word has formed their own character. On the page facing each letter an illustration by a celebrated illustrator or graphic artist presents that artist's visual response. Among the diverse contributions are letters from Jane Goodall Neil Gaiman Jerome Bruner Shonda Rhimes Ursula K. Le Guin Yo-Yo Ma Judy Blume Lena Dunham Elizabeth Gilbert and Jacqueline Woodson as well as a ninety-eight-year-old Holocaust survivor a pioneering oceanographer and Italy's first woman in space. Some of the illustrators cartoonists and graphic designers involved are Marianne Dubuc Sean Qualls Oliver Jeffers Maira Kalman Mo Willems Isabelle Arsenault Chris Ware Liniers Shaun Tan Tomi Ungerer and Art Spiegelman.This project is woven entirely of goodwill generosity of spirit and a shared love of books. Everyone involved has donated their time and all profits will go to the New York Public Library systems. This stunning 272-page hardcover volume features a lay-flat binding to allow for greater ease of reading.