I wondered, as I read the editor’s note in the beginning of Erin Bow’s middle grade novel Stand on the Sky,if the book could stand up to the advance praise. 

Normally, I’m not one to pick up and write from a prompt, maybe because it seems more like a school assignment than a fun challenge. However, “your earliest memory involving ice cream” in my new Writer magazine intrigued me.

Following Enchanted Air, Margarita Engle’s memoir of her early years, I felt like she had stopped before the story ended. How wonderful when I was able to beg an advance reading copy of the sequel, Soaring Earth, from Net Galley! 

Every writer gets them before acceptance comes along. Numbers of rejection letters vary – sixty, one hundred, enough to paper the office. Really, one would wonder about the sanity of entering a profession with so much guaranteed gloom. 

Who could turn down an invitation to take a younger grandson to the older grandson’s school and a trip to the Scholastic Book Fair? Not me.

Bobby and I were in third grade together, and it was Valentine’s Day. We distributed our valentines to our classmates at the end of the day and gathered them in our sacks to take home.

Five-year-old Owen can define a routine for you. Since I began keeping him in the afternoons after his morning in preschool when his mother went back to work, we have followed the routine they had already established.

You often have to decide who to trust, especially if you have differing opinions from the same source. Case in point this time is Mother Nature. 

A butler, a cricket match, and middle school – even if you throw in a purple Bentley – doesn’t sound like a promising start for a page turning book, but then there is Gary Schmidt.

You might guess that I practiced what I preach with this blog title, and I would encourage you to practice it as well. 

Trouble does not let up for Oliver from the minute he is shackled to other prisoners in filthy conditions on the voyage nor through his sale to a cruel tobacco farmer who also owns a black slave named Bara. 

How I hate to learn from the news or on Facebook that there’s a celebration for a special day and I’m unprepared. 

The de Grummond Book Group came up with another excellent book selection in Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly.

Like many a leader, The Boss and his sidekick begin orders with “you need to” statements so there is no question about who needs to follow orders. 

I don’t think my nine-year head start was the reason that my sister Ruth recommended I Love Growing Older, but I’ll Never Grow Old.  

Some things and some people don’t know when to quit. 

Heather Montgomery is at it again – making the study of animals a lot of fun with her new book Little Monsters of the Ocean: Metamorphosis Under the Waves.

At Oak Grove Public Library, the library I frequent most often, a new wrinkle has been the final line in my checkout slip and on the email they send to document my loans. 

The prologue (love a good prologue!) sets a backstory for the mystery to come – the mystery part a foregone conclusion with a book titled A Baker Street Wedding. 

Joseph has lost his staff. The moss on the manger roof is splotchy. The donkey has no ears and the cow only one of her horns.