Sharon Draper began Melody’s story in Out of My Mind. I recommend reading it for background before reading her newest account in Out of My Heart. Reading them back to back would be best.

I could hear urgency in my daughter-in-law’s voice when I answered the phone. “Could you go get Benjamin at school? He missed the transfer bus.”

One good thing seems to be certain in the wake of every national or international crisis, whether manmade or in nature. Jodi Picoult will incorporate it into a gripping novel. The current pandemic sets the scene for Wish You Were Here.

We celebrated Thanksgiving #65 together yesterday, just the two of us. We’ve had all kinds of Thanksgivings from our family of three in Belgium to big family gatherings in Mississippi. Probably the hardest were the years that entailed Thanksgiving with one family at lunch and a second with the other family at dinner.

The birthday party for Curious George included his friends of all ages from grandparents (us) to grandchildren (Benjamin and Owen from next door). This much beloved monkey turned 80 this year, and we all agreed that he looks really good for his age.

You may have met Lucy Barton in Elizabeth Strout’s novel My Name Is Lucy Barton, but it is not necessary before you read Oh, William!, her newest novel about Lucy’s first and ex-husband.

At the end of my recent sister trip, I had a front row seat to watch the planes coming in and taking off – albeit with a dirty window – as I awaited my flight home in Atlanta. My mind took a turn back in time to my first three-part flight.

Take the setting of a community with a school shooting, add a twelve-year-old protagonist whose brother has just died of a congenital heart defect, and start each chapter with a math fact. Emily Barth Isler puts Lucy, who sorts her issues mathematically, in just such a setting in her book, with appropriate name of Aftermath.

In 2004, Jerry Pinkney stood at the podium and began “I am dyslexic.” I was in the audience of more than 300 librarians, teachers, and children’s book lovers to hear his acceptance speech for the University of Southern Mississippi Medallion for his contributions to children’s literature at the Kaigler Book Festival.

Today is the 109th anniversary of Mama’s birth, and I’m thinking about the old 1948 movie title, “I Remember Mama.” I came to appreciate her a bit more in an educational psychology class I took in graduate school.

Kat Pigott’s new book, Rougarou Stew, is out just in time and just scary enough for Halloween. Down in Acadiana, kids know about the monster Rougarou that will eat you and your friends if you don’t eat him first.

Today, they say, is “Face Your Fears Day.” My principal fears have included public speaking, water, travel, and heights. A couple have vanished, probably because I was motivated to face them.

Not that anybody asked why my grandfather’s house was suddenly barn red, but I’ll tell you anyway. First, a bit of background.

I’ve been told that you can’t tell a book by its cover, but this might be an exception. Joy Harjo, in her newest book and second memoir, Poet Warrior, laces her story together in poetry and lyrical prose.

More than a few decades ago, in this house, on this date, a baby girl was born. The house at that time was unpainted. How it came to be barn red is another story for another time.

If you are familiar with the writing of Kathi Appelt, it will come as no surprise that she gets into the minds of animals to tell a spellbinding story. She does this again in her new middle grade novel, Once Upon a Camel.

As this month comes to a close, I celebrate ten years of writing this blog. A 10th anniversary gift is, traditionally, made of tin or aluminum. Tin and aluminum are often used to store things one wants to preserve which seems appropriate since written words preserve everything from ideas to memories.

I wonder when I read beginnings like those in Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna by Alda P. Dobbs if the writing can be maintained at that level for a whole book.

“The smoking star lit the night sky as women wept, holding their babies close. Men kept quiet while the old and the weak prayed for mercy.”

A daughter-in-law brought illusions

of quiet country life –

eight acres, one house for them, one for us,

on either side of a Mississippi “crick.”

Qian Julie Wang’s memoir, Beautiful Country released on September 7, recounts her family’s coming to what she calls Mei Guo, beautiful country, when she is seven years old in 1994.