Judith Viorst tells us in free verse what it is like to be Nearing Ninety to be published on April 2 with her wicked sense of humor intact. You don’t have to be anywhere near that age to enjoy the book.

Now and again, I hear or read a quote that says exactly what I mean that I wish I had thought of first. When I have my act together, I write them down with the proper attrition to come back to for reflection

Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain, brings a new novel in Varinathat feels more like a biography. 

Pie ranks right up there as a favorite dessert so the excuse afforded every year to make one on March 14, (p), Pi(e) Day seems valid to me. As I struggled with my crust which wasn’t cooperating this year, I thought about another pie in the Butler family stories. 

Some good well-written books appeal to select audiences, and Dreaming in Code: Ada Byron Lovelace, Computer Pioneerby Emily Arnold McCully is one of these. 

Since my blogging day falls on what would have been his 103rdbirthday, an Ezra Jack Keats story seems to be a must. For much of his life the possibility that he would become a starving artist as his father feared seemed to have been about fifty/fifty.

As I have done in the past, I am alerting my blog readers ahead of time so they don’t miss a celebration. March 14 is National Napping Day. To say I have always been fond of naps would be a lie, and I won’t tell it.

I diluted the drudgery of dusting by adding a dose of history. Reminders of the past crept into my head as I stroked the woodgrain in the oak table with faint tokens here and there of small accidents.

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.