Blogs & Podcasts

Find early literacy tips and children's books on the Children's Blog. Discover your next great read on the Books Movies Music Blog. Dig into Nashville history with the Community History Blog. Listen to stories, history, and culture on NPL Podcasts. Please see this Note for Readers.

Podcast
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"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Part II

In our last encounter with our protagonist Ichabod Crane, we find him summarily compared to his rival Brom Bones, a rough and rustic practical joker—both of them competing for the hand of the somewhat compelling Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of a well-to-do farmer. As our story reopens, we find Ichabod wending his way through a rich autumn landscape en route to the Van Tassels' for an evening of celebration and perhaps – perhaps not a little romance.

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"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Part I

Named after General George Washington, Washington Irving was the first American writer to achieve best-selling international renown.

Warmer temperatures and longer days outside increase the risk for dehydration, especially for those in vulnerable populations like children and the elderly. If plain water isn’t your thing, check out these tips and tricks to maintain good hydration throughout the day.

Podcast
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Family Folktales: The Voice of Death

A man is determined that he and his family will avoid death forever. What will happen when they reach a country where the people do not even know what death means?

Science fiction writers of the past dreamed of futures, dark and bright, in which humans traveled to the stars, colonized other worlds, and encountered aliens both friendly and deadly. In all their imaginings, did they ever see their genre--ghettoized for so long as just that, genre fiction, said with a sneer--gaining prominence, even prevalence in the culture?

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"Winter Dreams"

Today’s story, “Winter Dreams,” is considered one of Fitzgerald‘s finest stories and is frequently anthologized. Writing his editor Max Perkins in June 1925, Fitzgerald described “Winter Dreams” as “a sort of first draft of the Gatsby idea.”