Adam Gopnik

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux gave names to all the entrances of their most famous work of genius, Central Park. The Children’s Gate is the entrance on the east side at Seventy-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue; and it’s the metaphor for why, after five years in Paris, his family came back to New York: so their children could "grow up in New York, to be natives here, as we could never be, to come in through the Children’s Gate, not the Stranger’s Gate" (which is high on the West Side). From Bluei, a goldfish fated to meet a Hitchcockian end, to Charlie Ravioli, an imaginary playmate who, being a New Yorker, is too busy to play, Adam’s book—and his presentation—are full of characters with extraordinary resonance for parents and children, for city-dwelling lovers of place, and any audience eager to pass through the Children’s Gate with him.