Happy New Year! As we begin a new year, I wish each of you a peaceful and happy one with an acrostic.

Rachel Trethewey uses previously unpublished letters from the Churchill archives to tell the story of the Churchill sisters in the aptly named biography, The Churchill Sisters.

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. Since the nativity scene came from Sears and was inexpensive in the first place, why don’t we just replace it?

Gary Schmidt is a prime reason that books should not have age labels. His books are labelled “middle grade.” Like youth, his books are often wasted on the young. An adult friend and I have become Schmidt groupies and make sure we read and discuss the next book when it comes out.

This blog is part book review and part cautionary tale. I’ll start with a word of caution. If you allow your daughter to grow up to be a librarian, you can count on your to-be-read stack of books to grow like Southern kudzu from her suggestions, even if your list gets no help from other sources.

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.