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The Japanese director won the Academy Award for Spirited Away. His latest animated work is Howl's Moving Castle. He and others talk about making serious films for audiences young and old.

The head of character animation at DreamWorks, Rex Grignon, tells us what he's reading. Grignon worked on Shrek, DreamWorks' first film Antz, and on the new comedy Madagascar. His book choices are usually not job-related.

Don Kroodsma records the unique, regional dialects of both birds and the people who love to listen to them. In his new book, he champions a theory: Like people, birds also have their own "accents."

Child soldiers are still very much a fact of life in countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka and much of Africa. The U.N. is attempting to lure some of these soldiers into schools, but the phenomenon remains a global scourge.

Scott Simon talks with Martin Dugard, author of The Last Voyage of Columbus. Dugard delves into the rarely portrayed final journey of the famous explorer.

George Johnson talks about his new book, Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe. Henrietta Leavitt, while working at Harvard College's observatory in the early 20th century, discovered a way to measure distances between stars, which led astronomers to calculate the size of the universe.

Karen Grigsby Bates tours the South Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts with journalist Karl Fleming, who was nearly beaten to death during a racial protest in the summer of 1966. Fleming's new book details his time reporting on the civil rights movement during the turbulent 1960s.

While Mama Had a Quick Little Chat, a new illustrated children's book, captures the frustration of a little girl who just wants her mother to get off the phone.

Melissa Block and food writer Grace Young trek through New York's Chinatown in search of wok hay, the magical essence released by a good wok when it's properly cared for and heated just right.

Madeleine Brand looks at the history and contemporary controversy over the paparazzi — photographers who pursue shots of celebrities trying to go about their everyday lives.