There are some advantages of being the firstborn that have come into play as we approach this weekend’s celebration of Mother’s Day. As far as we know, there is only one portrait ever taken of Mama as a baby. It’s in splotchy shape, but I have it in the photographic folder that studios used at that time.

I never seem to run out of new places to find good books. As a regular reader of “Level Up Your Writing Life” in Writer’s Digest, I noticed that the column writer Sharon Stone also wrote books under a pseudonym as Jess Montgomery. Of course, I wondered if she could write a good story as well as give good advice, and Oak Grove Public Library had a copy of The Widows.

We’ve shared our lodgings with a Wren family for the four springs we have lived at what I call “The Ranch.” I’ve thought of ourselves as the landlords as we have occupied the guest house on these eight acres with the Wrens having residence in their nest atop the inside carport post.

By the time I have reached page 8 of Flipping Forward Twisting Backward by Alma Fullerton, I knew which grandson would receive this book for his birthday. Claire shares his problem of letters in words that float, blur, and get all mixed up, but she also shares his advantage of having places in life to excel.

Who would have thought that I could get this far into poetry month without a mention of it? Let’s just say there have been a few things going on here even while poetry month has occupied a space in the corner of my mind. In case I should forget, there is always my poet friend Irene Latham who sends a post card reminder.

After the festival’s over comes a week of recovery. The Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival has been a highlight of every year for me since 2002 until it was cruelly interrupted by the coronavirus. This year it was back, entailing leaving home about 8:30 AM and returning about 9:30 PM. That was last week. This week was recuperation and relishing the memories.

Chelsea Sedoti writes a mesmerizing young adult mystery in Tell Me What Really Happened. Part of the intrigue is her use of only the voices of the four friends of Maylee, the murder victim, as they answer interrogation questions in solitary first person police interviews.

Given that I have only had one signing for my book, feel free to question my expertise as I give hints about how to have an enjoyable one. Nonetheless, I go right ahead with my suggestions.

Start with a bit of island culture, throw in a love of music, and finish off with a plea for recycling trash and see if an interesting children’s book can happen. In The Girl Who Heard Music with words by Marni Fogelson and Mahani Teave and pictures by Marta Alvarez Miguens, the team does exactly that.

Evidently, there is now a day for almost everything. Today is the day for my favorite office supply – Paper Clip Day! You could spend a while on Google looking at paper clip usages and meanings. Some early versions had a patent, but the current model seems not to have been patented at all. It has been in production at least since the early 1870s by the Gem Manufacturing Company. 

In the book, The People’s Hospital, Dr. Ricardo Nuila takes a look at our broken medical system, focusing on the challenges and inequities in the health insurance world. He focuses on six case histories of people whose treatment has been affected by their income, immigration status, or twists in state Medicaid law.

It’s the middle of March and up pops a bud on our traditional family favorite milk-and-wine lily that blooms off and on all summer! Admittedly, we have had a few warm days, but on the day I discover the bud, the high is 49° with a freeze warning for the night.

My two for one picture book review today features two picture books from the same publisher to help children deal with some of life’s struggles. They are neither preachy nor didactic but approach real problems in a child friendly way.

Today, March 11, 2023, marks the 107th anniversary of the birth of a premature baby in Brooklyn, New York. His chances for survival were precarious. As a child of Jewish immigrant parents in a daily struggle to make ends meet, his chances for making a name in the world were even less probable.

Jennifer Zeigler begins her book, Worser, with a title that is a play on words. Middle schooler William Orser acquired the nickname long ago when someone noticed that his first initial combined with his last name made “worser.” The name stuck with an additional irritation to him because it is so ungrammatical.

Obsessions, compulsions, manias, urges, impulses, yearnings, desires, hankerings – we call them by a lot of names. Some have positive connotations and some are negative. Some are sophisticated words to go in technical manuals, and some might be spit out by a straw-chewing guy in overalls, sitting atop a wood rail fence.

Mark Dawidziak sets the tone for his search for the cause of death of Edgar Allan Poe as he begins his account with Poe’s passing from this life on an appropriately stormy night on October 7, 1849 when he was only forty years old, adding that nobody knows the precise cause.

Twenty-five feet of crumbly brick walk in need of replacement. Our walk was an open invitation to tumble and spend time recuperating from a bad fall. The brick beauty was long gone, replaced with broken shards interspersed with weeds. But just try to get a brick and concrete expert out to restore it. Not twenty-five feet.

It started with a note in a package from our librarian daughter back in 2016, “Dad, you’ll recognize yourself on page 140 especially (and other pages as well). You’ll both enjoy this.” Inside the package was A Man Called Ove. Page 140 said, “When he was driving somewhere, he drew up schedules and plans and decided where they’d fill up.

Rez Dogs, by noted author Joseph Bruchac, is an example of my contention that some of today’s best writers are doing their work for middle graders. The verse novel begins with Malian, on a visit to her grandparents on a Wabanaki reservation, when she notices a dog. Her connection to the modern world comes immediately.