The backstory of the book, Seeing the Elephant by Virginia Howard, formed my Friday blog. Frank Reaugh, renowned artist and teacher, took three ladies and three of his teenaged students including Virginia’s mother and namesake aunt on a two-month excursion to see the newly opened Grand Canyon. The book is based on the diary kept by the aunt.

A couple of decades ago, one Virginia (Virginia Howard) sat next to another (me) in New Orleans at a meeting of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. In our small talk, she told me of a book she had been yearning to write.

Wendy S. Swore in her recently released middle grade novel Strong Like the Sea, makes her setting almost like another character. Alex was born in Hawaii to an atypical family.

I asked this seven-year-old grandson to pose for my picture to illustrate this blog and questioned if his teacher ever told him to keep his eyes on his own paper. “Well, she used to,” he said, stretching his arms into a semicircle, “before we got these things around our desks.”

I was drawn to The Immortals by Steven T. Colis when I saw the blurb on Net Galley about this book, published this month, focusing on a group of medical chaplains and a young Black petty officer who were heroes in the sinking of the Dorchester on February 3, 1943.

A favorite activity when I taught kindergarten, for the children and for me, was the old “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” motion song. I’ve had to give up the “knees and toes” segment over the last few months since my right knee has cried, “Enough!”

Should you be in the mood for a cozy mystery, let me recommend Murder in a Scottish Garden by Traci Hall, just out on May 25. Be prepared for the Scottish dialect throughout that takes you right into that Scottish garden and surrounding seaside community of Nairn.

What a legacy! Eric Carle departed this world at 91 years of age leaving behind more than 70 books translated into a number of languages with his most famous, A Very Hungry Caterpillar, selling more than 50 million copies.

In 1943, Allie Bert Tucker, but please skip the “Allie,” knows that it is her fault when her mother and baby sister die in a difficult childbirth in the mountains of North Carolina.

Juliana Urtubey of Nevada, national teacher of the year from Nevada, in an exuberant appearance on morning television declared that teaching for her was Joy and Justice. This year, as never before, those two words have been needed by educators and their students.

Having decided I was in the mood for an old-fashioned Western, I requested an advance reading copy of High Country Justice by Nik James (to be published on May 25) on the Net Galley site. The first chapter, with four dead bad guys and a pretty girl arriving on the scene, let me know that the book would fit the genre.

I used to get a laugh from my junior high students when they came in lauding their latest boyfriend/girlfriend as being “so cute.” My warning was, “You have to be careful with looks. I married a cute guy with wavy black hair.”

As she has done so well before, Karen Cushman returns to history to set her novel, War and Millie McGonigle, in the place where her husband grew up. A young girl in San Diego during World War II turns out to deal with issues that will be remarkably timely.

As we get ready to celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, I have been thinking about how different these two mothers were and reflecting that there are many ways one can mother, never error-free, but well.

The tone for Jamie Sumner’s book Roll with It is set in the first line, “It’s kind of hard to watch The Great British Bake Off over plates of Stouffer’s lasagna.”

I do my last tribute to this year’s Poetry Month with three spine poems, an enjoyable exercise I stumbled upon a couple of years ago. Simply stack some books so that the order of their names on the spine make a poem.

Last month, another member of the de Grummond Book Group continued a conversation with me via email after the meeting, recommending that I read The Push by Asley Audrain. She forewarned me that it was not a light read but brought real-life issues into a compelling story line.

In this quarantining time, we have a celebration that can be observed from a safe distance! Poem in Your Pocket Day falls yearly on a selected day during Poetry Month.

So start with a talented writer of historical fiction, give her a great-great-grandmother born in 1870s Shanghai, and turn her loose to do extensive research – and there is a good chance that a fine novel will result.

I’ve had a common experience with other writers from what I can read and hear in that Covid has brought a brain freeze for our normal writing practices, followed by experimenting with forms of writing outside our comfort zones.