Move over, Jane Eyre!

Publishers Weekly interviews Isabel Greenberg about her Glass Town comic.

What attracted you to the Brontës and their childhood? I’ve always loved their novels. Then I discovered that they had written all this amazing juvenilia. It resonated for me because my first two books are set in an imaginary world, so to a certain extent I knew how it felt to invent a world and populate it with characters, to be a creator-god of your own small universe. What blew my mind was how incredibly detailed and epic their world was; considering how young they were, it’s a feat.
Is your Glass Town based closely on the Brontës’ version? Oh, I made up a lot. When I was researching, I initially got very attached to the source material, but there was no way I could use it all. In the end, I picked five characters that were most intriguing to me and loosely kept their plot arcs.
Also, my book isn’t just about that imaginary world; it’s about creating an imaginary world, and the way that Charlotte Brontë’s reality and fiction began to blend. She would see her characters looking at her through classroom windows, and there are descriptions of her and Emily playacting their own characters to each other well into their teens.
Anything notable you kept out? A lot of colonialism. They were children of their time. I didn’t want to leave it out entirely, because it was true, but I wanted to tread a fine line for modern readers. That was one of the hardest things. (Shaenon Garrity)

In The New Yorker Margaret Atwood writes about the lovely 1940s comic strip Lulu.

And, in an age somewhat devoid of female title characters, she was the title character. One could therefore be little, and a girl, and nonetheless the title character. Move over, Jane Eyre!

The Times features Queenie author Candice Carty-Williams.

As a child Carty-Williams loved reading Malorie Blackman, but as she grew up she could find no adult books with rounded characters of colour. “The only classic I read that I found myself in was Wuthering Heights because Heathcliff was presented as dark and ‘other’ and was quite brooding and isolated and alone,” she says. [...]
Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë? Charlotte Brontë (Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester)

The Times recommends last‑minute travel deals.

West Yorkshire country hotel
Healds Hall is an ivy-snagged hotel with large gardens and an award-winning restaurant ten miles south of Leeds, near Brontë Country. Saving almost 50 per cent, Travelzoo has a night’s half-board from £50pp, with a bottle of prosecco, until March 31, excluding Christmas and New Year, Valentine’s Day and a few other dates (travelzoo.com). (Richard Mellor)

BookRiot has selected '20 Literary Holiday Cards to Send This Season', including the ones by Amanda White for the Brontë Parsonage Museum (available here).

The Brontë Sisters’ Christmas at Haworth Parsonage: Send a Brontë lover this snowy scene from their home at Haworth Parsonage, complete with adorable leaping foxes! (Tirzah Price)

Digital Arts Online recommends the '25 best picture books for children', including

Fiona Waters with Frann Preston-Gannon, I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree - A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year
An award-winner this one, as this compendium of poems selected by Fiona Waters recently won The Waterstones Children's Gift of the Year 2018 prize, an award specially created simply for this book by the judges of Waterstones' regular Book of the Year prize.
While that award went to Sally Rooney’s not-for-kids novel Normal People, I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree is definitely a crowning kids lit achievement. As can be guessed from the title, the book is a celebration of the natural world, as told through 365 poems, one for every day of the year. Unsurprisingly, it's being heralded as the most ambitious poetry collection for children ever published.
Featured poets include the likes of William Blake, Emily Brontë and Carol Ann Duffy, their words accompanied by Frann's Yury Norshtein-esque take on flora and fauna. Interestingly, the book is published by the National Trust in what we think is a nice way for the kids to appreciate all the nature for whom we're slowly tearing apart.

Arbetaren (Sweden) discusses Charlotte Brontë and slavery.