Alina Adams Media

03/10/2025

My math and physics teacher husband likes to remind that no number is anymore meaningful than any other number. But I am a layperson. And I am kind of tickled that not only did my mailing list pass 4000 subscribers this morning, but that the number currently sits at 4004. It's cute and symmetrical. No matter what the math wonks thinks.

Join the fun at:

Applying your child to NYC Pre-K, Elementary, Middle or High School for 2025 and beyond? You can't have true school choice until you know all your choices - and the inside secrets of how to get them.

03/09/2025

Some states already do this. Via The 74:

Adams: In NYC, bright kids are left hanging. Some states give them Individualized Education Programs and let them work at their own accelerated pace.

03/07/2025

Super excited to announce that my official book launch for "Go On Pretending" will be Saturday, May 3 at 6 PM at MyBiblioteka.com in Brooklyn! Stay tuned for full details (there will be an in-person and a Zoom option), special offers and more! In the meantime, check out what owner Anya Morlan-Stysis suggests for your Russian language reading!

https://youtu.be/7zzQxdF83BY?si=9YOWgGoiH7mNyhBf

A special holiday treat! Anya Morlan-Stysis, owner of Brooklyn's MyBiblioteka Bookstore and lending library, shares Russian, Ukrainian, and translated Englis...

03/06/2025

With public NYC high schools set to notify admission this afternoon, my annual reminder that your child can get into the "best" school, and it can still not work out. And that's OK, too.

This essay is adapted from posts that originally appeared on the New York School Talk blog. At the end of October, I began to homeschool myself in lieu of completing my tenure as a Stuyvesant High School student. There are many reasons I did this, including greater educational and temporal freedom....

03/05/2025

“Well, it’s obviously Shakespeare, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Edmund Bard?” His laugh rolled in like a fog diffusing throughout her senses. “You gave the whole game away right there. He’s Edmund the Bastard from King Lear.” Jonas quoted, “To both these sisters have I sworn my love; each jealous of the other, as the stung are of the adder, which of them shall I take?” When Rose didn’t reply quickly enough; primarily because she’d run out of coughs and gulps and felt pressed to come up with an alternative; speaking was out of the question, his confidence wavered. “Did I get it wrong, then? How terribly embarrassing.”

“No.” Rose found her voice, because his had briefly tottered. “You’re one hundred percent correct. When Irna – Miss Phillips – when she told me about the character, I suggested the name. As sort of a little joke between the two of us.”

“Ah! So you’re the Shakespearean scholar.”

“Hardly!” Her snort was instinctive. If utterly unladylike.

“It was precisely the guidance I required to understand this man. He commits villainous acts, seducing married women, attempting to murder his father and brother, but he does not see himself as the villain. After being cast aside for an accident of birth, he feels righteously justified to, as they say: top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards! Surely, a sentiment we’ve all experienced. Whether or not we’d admit it.”

Was that the moment Rose fell in love with him?

It was recently pointed out to me that I was born in the “early 1900s.” Wait! What? You could have knocked me over with Mr. Carson’s Bowler hat… Obviously, I know my own bir…

02/24/2025

Private preschools will announce admissions on Thursday, February 27, while public preschool applications are due on Friday, February 28.

For parents who reached out to me asking for recommendations about which public programs to rank, I stressed that proximity is key. All the available programs are very similar. Most are in community based centers (because spots at public schools tend to be limited and go to siblings of children already in the school). None of them "prep" children for Hunter or other Gifted & Talented Kindergarten options. You are much better off selecting the school easiest for you to get to, as that will bring the most benefits on a daily basis.

However, there are things all good preschools, public and private, must provide. Two veteran teachers explain what parents should be looking for when they tour, here:

Is your preschool doing everything it should be? Private school and Universal PreK teachers explain what you should look for as you tour, and how to know if ...

02/17/2025

Working in NYC education, where "gifted" is the default setting for every child, I was drawn to read "The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize S***m Bank" by David Plotz. Written around the time these pre-ordained "superbabies" were hitting their high school and college years, their "genius" was demonstrated via the schools they got into - ones NYC parents would deem the bare minimum. Very well researched, engagingly written, and just plain old fun to read, "The Genius Factory" demonstrated what should have been obvious to those who initially launched this project: That the offspring's "achievements" were less the result of them being the biological children of successful men (very few were actual Nobel winners, most were just doctors, computer programers, and other types of scientists, along with some Olympic athletes), and much more them being the children of women who went out of their way to select "brilliant" s***m donors, raising the kids in homes where they were encouraged (or compelled) to live up to their imagined great potential. Considering that the descendants of true geniuses rarely achieve anything of note themselves, and that's with the benefit of both nature and the nurture of being raised by their biological genius parents, it's amazing that people who thought themselves smarter than average ever thought this experiment could yield the saviors of humanity they were expecting. But the book is great!

From the former editor of Slate and CEO of Atlas Obscura comes the unbelievable story of “the Nobel Prize s***m bank” and the children it produced—“a superb...

02/09/2025

Yuliya Patsay, narrator of "My Mother's Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region," continues to suggest my sentences are too long to be read comfortably by a reasonable human. (She and my high-school AP English teacher make very similar faces when confronted by my work.)

02/04/2025

For :

“Mr. Micheaux was America’s first colored filmmaker. He has quite the biography. Son of a freed slave, he was a homesteader, a mill worker, a Pullman porter, naturally—we do it in real life, not merely in the movies—a shoe-shiner, and a novelist. Had seven books published. And that was all before he turned to film production. His company, Lincoln Motion Pictures—note who is credited in the title—was the first owned by a colored man. Mr. Micheaux wrote, he directed, he produced. Forty-four finished films, silents and talkies. He was quite the success, even sold stock in his corporation—primarily to wealthy white folks he charmed during his days with the railroad. I only met him briefly on The Betrayal. It was the first race story to open at a white theater, right here in New York City at the Mansfield, in 1948. A generous critic called it the greatest Negro photoplay of all time. The New York Times, of course, hated it. Especially the suggestion that Negroes and whites might find many points of commonality, not merely in professional and community endeavors, but possibly in marriage.”

A Literal Literary Loser Mixes Fact and Fiction

01/30/2025

I am a professional writer. I get rejected all the time. All. The. Time. Constantly, regularly, and any other synonym you can think of. I just got rejected three times yesterday alone. In three completely different ways.

A Literal Literary Loser Has a Day

01/28/2025

Woke up to a slurry of emails from parents who can't believe all it takes for their child to be pronounced "gifted" in NYC isn't a test, an interview, or even a detailed form to fill out. It's just a "yes" or "no" binary click of a button. Here's everything families need to know about the process:

New York City public schools offer two types of Gifted & Talented education. Five accelerated programs in citywide schools teach the standard NY state curriculum a year in advance, while […]

01/26/2025

“You’re a very smart girl,” Irna Phillips told her protegee. “But I’m afraid love has made you very stupid.”

“At my job interview, we agreed the wonderful thing about serials is that no matter how bad the mistake, tune in tomorrow offers you a chance to fix anything.”

“I am offering you that chance. But you are tragically close to running out of tomorrows. And no one, not you, not even me, will be able to write you out of this one.”

01/24/2025

Public Kindergarten applications close today.

To make sure you did everything right and maximized your odds of getting into your top choice programs, check out the videos below:

Public Kindergarten Ranking: https://youtu.be/-oeOAQcIosY?si=LB_6zvnJZG_mjPiy

Public Kindergarten Application: https://youtu.be/W3xgbj104-k?si=Z-TPB624lGa0vHYa

Public Gifted & Talented Programs: https://youtu.be/2ODbYis2cQE?si=t2cgvT5uHxoytLj_

Good luck

What's the difference between citywide and district G&T programs? How do you apply? What are your odds of getting in? Is Kindergarten the only entry point? W...

01/22/2025

"Penelope" by Rebecca Harrington is the story of a young woman's first year at Harvard. Sometimes she is socially awkward. Sometimes she doesn't understand if she's being friend-zoned. Sometimes she can't figure out the true motivations of those around her. Sometimes she doesn't know the right thing to say, and sometimes she gets roped into doing something she doesn't want to do. No one tries to label her or give her a diagnosis. The other characters, who are all the same to one extent or another, know that being a young person out on your own for the first time is messy and hard and don't expect perfection or a lack of anxiety. It's very refreshing. Also, I learned the astounding fact that, at Harvard, the waffles are branded with the school crest???? Can someone who attended recently confirm or deny? This is of utmost importance to me!

When Penelope O’Shaunessy, “an incoming freshman of average height and lank hair” steps into Harvard Yard for the first time she has lots of advice from her mother: "Don't be too enthusiastic,...

01/21/2025

Somehow, without meaning to, “Go On Pretending” turned into an accidental ode to the crux of our relationship. I didn’t realize it until I wrote the following scene....

A Literal Literary Loser Loves a Lot

01/20/2025

I didn't do it on purpose, but reading AJ Jacobs' "The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning" over the past week proved very apropos. I learned more than I knew I wanted (needed?) to know about how deliberately hard it is to pass an amendment, judges making laws, presidents declaring war, congressional voting, and election day cakes. This isn't the most scholarly book you'll read on any of those topics, but, odds are, it will be the most entertaining.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically chronicles his hilarious adventures in attempting to follow the original meaning of the Constitution, as he searches for answers to...

01/12/2025

My math-and-physics-teacher husband knew that if our daughter didn't take geometry in 9th grade, she'd never get to calculus. He was right.

Adams: My math-and-physics-teacher husband knew that if our daughter didn't take geometry in 9th grade, she'd never get to calculus. He was right.

01/07/2025

This book series wouldn't have been possible were it not for the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding scandal which began exactly 31 years ago. I was in Detroit when it happened, chaperoning my brother, who was competing in Novice Dance at the US Figure Skating Championships. Though the actual real-life scandal the first book in the series, "Murder on Ice," is based on was the 2002 Olympic drama in the pairs and ice dance competition. Hey, remember when skating was really hot for a while there....

Get all five, best-selling Alina Adams Figure Skating Mystery novels, originally published as paperback originals by Berkley Prime Crime, in one electronic volume with this exclusive, enhanced collection featuring videos by Ice Theatre of NY that includes... BOOK ONE) MURDER ON ICE At the World F...