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Kate Winslet is the latest celebrity slated to appear on BBC children’s channel CBeebies’ “Bedtime Stories” over the Christmas and New Year period.

Winslet made headlines recently for her scene in the upcoming “Avatar” sequel, where she holds her breath underwater for a record breaking seven minutes and 15 seconds.

Her episode will be broadcast on Dec. 19, where she will be reading Sarah McIntyre’s “Grumpycorn,” a story about a unicorn with writer’s block, and how his underwater friends help him overcome it.

The “Bedtime Stories” Christmas lineup also includes former heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua, actor Richard E. Grant, Paralympian Lora Fachie, French pop sensation Christine and the Queens and CBeebies veteran Justin Fletcher.

Joshua will be reading the 1962 book “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats on Dec. 22. “The Snowy Day” features one of the earliest Black protagonists in a major children’s book.

Meanwhile, New Year...

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (December 14) is the wild card in the animated Oscar race. It not only introduces Miles Morales as the alternative Spidey, the Afro-Puerto Rican teen from Brooklyn, but also boldly breaks the rules of animation as a moving comic book splattered with graffiti. Yet, given what Phil Lord and Chris Miller already accomplished with “The Lego Movie,” this was the logical next step.

“Miles is one of the most popular characters, if not the most popular character, to be introduced in the last 10 years or so,” said Lord, who shares script credit with Rodney Rothman (“22 Jump Street”). “The thing that [‘Miles Morales’ co-creator] Brian Bendis did was to help us imagine that it could be a completely different kind of person under that mask. And yet a person that embodied the heart of what Steve Ditko and Stan Lee started with: an unexpected hero who feels too young and too unqualified,...

[1] Ben Stiller is set to reunite with Reality Bites writer Helen Childress for a new picture that couldn't be more different from their last collaboration. The new project, titled The Mountain, will be a period horror story based on characters from Edith Wharton's novel Summer. The movie marks a sharp change of pace for Stiller, whose past projects have been mostly comedies. In addition, it represents a return to writing for Childress, whose Reality Bites was her first and last feature screenplay. More details after the jump. Wharton's 1917 classic describes the sexual awakening of a New England woman named Charity Royall. She falls in love with a man who, unbeknownst to her, is engaged to someone else, and becomes pregnant by him. Childress' "sophisticated horror" script, on the other hand, has been described [2] as being "in the vein of Rosemary's Baby" and revolves around "a young woman who struggles...

Adam Hendershot

Thanks for welcoming our celebrity blogger — Elisabeth Röhm!

The actress, 37, best known for her role as Serena Southerlyn on Law & Order, has a busy 2011 ahead of her.

She can be seen on the big screen in the upcoming films Chlorine, Transit and Abduction, and plans to continue her role as spokesmom for Juno Baby.

In her latest blog, Röhm — who is mom to 2½-year-old daughter Easton August with fiancé Ron Anthony — looks back on her own love of the written word, shares her and Easton’s favorite books to read together, and asks for your picks.

I’ll...

Actress Jennifer Stone, of the Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place and the movie Harriett the Spy has teamed up with Jumpstart to be an ambassador for this year’s Read for the Record campaign.

On October 8, 2009, adults across the globe read Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar to 2,019,752 children to raise awareness of literacy, with stars such as Justin Bieber, Nelly Furtado, Meredith Vieira, Mary-Louise Parker, Tiki Barber, Vince Vaughn, Lo Bosworth and Henry Winkler lending a hand. On October 7, 2010, Jumpstart will host over 2.5 million people worldwide as they read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.

“I support reading, because it’s been such a wonderful escape for me in my life,” says Jennifer Stone. “I wish kids would know just how much it is a positive thing. Not only does it provide such a wonderful escape, but it greatly intensifies vocabulary and reading comprehension by...

Join the fun on October 7th as - Colgate Bookstore, student volunteers from the Head Start group at Colgate's Center for Outreach, Volunteerism, and Education (Cove), and the Kappa Kappa Gamma (Kkg) sorority take part in Jumpstart's Read for the Record. October 7, 2010 is the official date of the nation-wide campaign to set a new world record for the largest shared reading experience on a single day. The record-break seekers will be reading The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. This year the event will again get its kick off on NBC's Today show and will be followed by large and...

Jumpstart's Read for the Record campaign is back, and hopes to smash last year’s record of people reading the same book at the same time.

On October 8, 2009, adults across the globe read Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar to 2,019,752 children to raise awareness of literacy, with stars such as Justin Bieber, Nelly Furtado, Meredith Vieira, Mary-Louise Parker, Tiki Barber, Vince Vaughn, Lo Bosworth and Henry Winkler lending a hand. On October 7, 2010, Jumpstart will host over 2.5 million people worldwide as they read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.

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