Illustration by Sara Caplan
Last month, our Research & Development interns began their summer at the LitWorld offices in NYC. Read more about their strengths, their stories, and their favorite books!
What is a book that you’ll never get tired of reading?
Sara: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur is a collection of poems about losing, loving, and healing. It is beautifully written and has equally beautiful, yet simple illustrations coupled with many of the pieces. Each poem captures universal feelings ingrained in the human experience. Milk and Honey provides eloquent comfort. It is good affirmation that I am in fact, despite appearances, not completely crazy. It is also the perfect book for reading while sitting on an embroidered pillow by the window gazing out into the pouring rain.
Lily: My choice would be Les Misèrables by Victor Hugo (it helps that it’s pretty hefty). Its prose is staggeringly poetic and melodic, and its stories intricately and inextricably woven to bring to life a tragic, yet vibrant and passionate revolution. What makes every moment reading this novel (and other exceptional pieces of literature) so wonderful are the subtleties — Hugo’s words are just enough to evoke familiar feelings I might not otherwise have thought were articulable.
Madeline: I never get tired of reading The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. The story book is about a young raccoon named Chester, his anxieties concerning his first day of school, and his mother’s approach to keeping him comfortable and excited for this new stage of life. I remember my mother used to read this book often to my sisters and I growing up, even past the age of us beginning school. We just loved the illustrations by Ruth E. Harper and Nancy M. Leak. The art captures the love and kindness that radiates from the story. Whenever I’m down, this book always makes me feel like I’m home!
Tiranke: A book that I’ll never get tired of reading is For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntzoke Shange (you’ve probably seen the Tyler Perry movie, but the book is better). It is a book composed of choreopoems that focuses on the everyday lives of black women. Each women is represented by a color to show their universality. Although all the women deal with some form of abuse, neglect, tragedy, and/ or oppression, they tell their stories and remain strong. I love that this book is universally relatable; no matter what race, gender, or sexual orientation someone identifies as, they will find a woman to identify with. I can read this book forever and ever and ever and I will never get tired of it!
If your life was a novel, what would it be called?
Sara: Once I Ate Two Jars of Pickles as an Afternoon Snack
Lily: The Secret of Solitude
Madeline: Train Traffic?: A young Texan’s journey taking on the Northeast, NYC, and life in general.
Tiranke: Working Progress