I could name a number of good mothers here, as I have in the past. My own family is full of them as I think of my mother and mother-in-law who were the subject of another blog, my three sisters, along with my daughter and daughters-in-law who have done a fine job with my grandchildren. There are also those who choose a mother responsibility.

It couldn’t have looked that promising on May 1, 1937. Even their first meeting brought mixed reactions. Appropriately, that meeting was at Virginia’s home church. Berton returned to lunch with the “cousins” he was visiting – actually the family of his mother’s first husband with whom she remained close even after he died. He told them he had met the woman he would marry. She gave a different report at her family dinner table saying she had met the ugliest man she had ever seen.

Lois Lowry is known for putting real life issues into a wonderful storyline. Her newest book, Tree. Table. Book., lives up to that reputation. In an interview about the upcoming book, she notes how often she writes about the relationship between the elderly and the young.

If you don’t know that the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival is a highlight of my year and that I use the pronoun “our” when I speak of what is in de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, I can assume that you have not often read this blog. Sometimes, I get surprised myself about the connections I find there.

Colleen Cambridge in her historical fiction cozy mystery takes the reader back to the aftermath of World War II with her protagonist Tabitha Knight. Tabitha may be an aspiring cook (chef would be overstating her skill) for her grandfather and his partner with Julia Child as her best friend. An American in Paris, she speaks fluent French which will help with both her missions in the book.

Bibliophagist or bibliophage. Call me either or both. The title has fit since my mother, concerned that she had an illiterate five-year-old on her hands, taught me to read before I went to school. Mama had instilled the love of words and story long before she embarked on teaching me to read. This new skill just meant I could read by myself.

You may be like me and have Amy Tan nicely cubbyholed into a novelist that writes from her cultural heritage. I have certainly enjoyed her string of books – The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Joy Luck Club, and The Bonesetter’s Daughter – to name a few. Now she has done something entirely different and worth reading.

I’ve been a subscriber to A Word A Day for at least twenty-five years. If you love new words, I recommend it, and it’s free though they are open to contributions in appreciation for the new words you learn. Sometimes a word strikes a chord as one did this last week. The word was “heightism.”

Out today in book stores, Dan Gemeinhart follows up The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise with Coyote Lost and Found. Coyote, still sharing the grief from the loss of her mother and two sisters with her father Rodeo, has just begun settling in to her new school and a new normal for life when she finds a box containing her mother’s ashes. She and her father must come to terms with whether they are ready to scatter the ashes.

In South Mississippi, we can hardly wait for our two or three weeks of winter to be over. I’ve been watching carefully for any signs of spring. Watching for a pot that will never boil, as the old saying goes, has nothing on watching for a bud to bloom. To distract myself, I decided to have some fun as I try my hand at a bit of flamenco.

Shelly Read sets her debut novel, Go As a River, in the mountain town of Iola, Colorado. The setting, which is based on a real happening when the town was destroyed by dam construction in the 1960s, joins the story like an extra character. Protagonist Victoria’s life is heavily influenced by her location beginning in 1948 when she is seventeen.

My bald-headed son Mark stopped by our house on his way to his home next door. With a twinkle in his eye, he put a grocery sack on the counter and said, “Now, I’ve paid my debt.” As I pulled a carton out of the sack, we were both transported to the days when he was a teenager with a head full of hair and a bottomless stomach.

My friend Cheryl Mathis and I have long shared fangirl status for books by Gary Schmidt so she let me know that he had a new book out. Back in September, I checked out The Labors of Hercules Beal from my library and saved it for my birthday treat for myself.

The first blueberry book came to my attention when I was in my early teens and my mother took a “Kiddie Lit” class at Ole Miss one summer. To help make that possible as the oldest daughter in a family of six, my reward for sister-sitting, housekeeping, and cooking chores was the stack of books she brought home.

Why would I stop after reading the first third of a book to see if my local library had the first book by an author who is new to me and put it on reserve? I’ll tell you.

No, not the Oscars, Emmys, Super Bowl, Nobel – I’m talking about really important awards given early each year by the American Library Association for distinguished books in children’s literature for the previous year and for lifetime achievement awards.

Unusual wintry precipitation that kept her at home and off the road in Kilgore, Texas, sent our family archivist looking for the picture of a memory. The location was an even less likely setting for the white stuff than Kilgore, and her shared picture also brought back memories to me.

Vera Wong begins with a dead husband, an ignored tea shop, and a grown son who shuns her help and advice. Jesse Q. Sutanto begins his humorous cozy mystery, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, with her discovery of a dead body in the shop when she comes down from her upstairs living area.

If you’ve read (and remember) what I’ve written in January before, you know I don’t make new year’s resolutions. I do like the idea behind the Roman god for whom the month is named as he looks back and then looks forward with a key in his hand to unlock the doors of the future. In this blog, I look back at 2023 and forward to 2024.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day is listed for 10 to 14-year-olds. The bottom number is not that bad, although I would have devoured it before I was ten. I think this generation has some nerds-to-be like me who will, too. The “to14” needs to be eliminated altogether and replaced with “and up.”