Isabelle Drake

  What's the story behind your latest book? One of my earliest memories is of a cereal box—Super Sugar Crisp, now called Golden Crisp—with an actual, playable cardboard ‘flexi record’ printed on the backside. My mom had just taken the box from the grocery bag, and it sat on the kitchen table, waiting to get stored. At age 4, I was already a music fan and pop culture scholar in the making, so I was both fascinated and excited. Still a preschooler, and so not great with scissors, I enlisted by big sister’s help in cutting the record from the package. I’m guessing the box, missing most of its backside, ended up in the cupboard. The small album, featuring brightly colored images of Archie and the gang, played at 33 1/3 speed and had 4 songs from cartoon band, The Archies, including one of my favorites, the mega-hit,  Sugar, Sugar . The flexi-record stayed on my family’s turntable for at least a day. Which, in little kid time, is forever. Fast forward about two decades, and I...

 

  Hit here for the April newsletter. In the midst of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic, binge-watching became an acceptable pastime. No more did we bingers have to discuss our hours in front of the screen with a sheepish attitude. Time spent ‘binging’ was no longer considered ‘wasted.’ Now, that time represented a connection to other humans. Sections of the ‘stay at home’ time are marked by which show we ‘were on.’ What did I binge? Riverdale. I rewatched each of the Riverdale episodes three times. All four seasons...all seventy-six episodes. That's A LOT of teen gothic drama. The end result, my non-fiction book of quizzes, sassy summaries, and trivia, that is out now!