INTRODCUTION Warrior on the Mound by Sandra W. Headen is a fictional story through the eyes of twelve-year-old, Cato Jones. Cato is the pitcher for the Pender County Rangers. He and his team sneak out of school to see the new baseball field for the white team. After getting caught for trespassing, events unfold and… Continue reading Exploring Segregation Through Cato’s Baseball Journey
INTRODUCTION Island of Spies is a charming novel, perfect for middle grade readers looking for a coastal take on WWII. The author, Sheila Turnage, artfully captures the life of an average island family entwined in the realities of a brewing war. Her precise words paint vivid pictures in the minds of eager young readers. From the… Continue reading Unraveling Mysteries: The Dime Novel Kids in Island of Spies
INTRODUCTION It's not too often that I run a book review twice. And to be honest, my TBR shelf is long and so I rarely reread a book. But I was re-researching the Jim Crow period for a presentation at the North Carolina Social Studies conference and rememberedThe Color of Love by Gene Cheek. I… Continue reading Revisiting ‘The Color of Love’: A Jim Crow Memoir Review
INTRODUCTION When you write "recent" historical fiction, sometimes you are fortunate enough to interview people who were alive during your story's period. I am one of those authors. HALF-TRUTHS takes place in Charlotte in 1950, and when I started researching the book twenty years ago, I searched for people who were alive in the 1950s.… Continue reading Learn to Read, Read to Learn
Introduction It's a delight for me to share the cover for Stacey Bartlett's forthcoming middle-grade novel, MONSTER MOUNTAIN (Monarch Press: 2025). For those of you who can't wait, you can scroll down to see it and read about the giveaway. For the rest of you who know how to bide your time and wait a… Continue reading You Can See It Here First: A Cover Reveal and Giveaway for Stacey Bartlett’s New Middle-Grade Novel
It is my pleasure to introduce Bountiful Red Acres by my North Carolina friend, Eileen Heyes. Written for third-eighth graders, it details a year in the life of two families one Black and one White in Surry County, as they move from season to season in 1900. The book is beautifully illustrated by Dare Coulter and is… Continue reading BOUNTIFUL RED ACRES by Eileen Heyes: A Review, Author Interview and Giveaway
If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember my post on Shannon Hitchcock's book, Saving Grandaddy's Stories. I'm happy to share two more books that Shannon has written about unsung Appalachian artists. I love these books so much that I'm saving one for my granddaughter who I'm teaching to sew. The illustrator… Continue reading 2 Picture Books by Shannon Hitchcock, 1 Giveaway
Congratulations to Clara Gillow Clark and Dorothy Price who won the downloadable version of Eyes on the Prize from last week's blog. The night that I stayed up late to finish reading Joyce Hostetter's fourth book in the Bakers Mountain Stories series, DRIVE (Calkins Creek, 2018), I texted Joyce: "This is going to be a hard book to… Continue reading DRIVE: A Review and Two Giveaways!
When I read in the Tantor Audio new release list that The Road To Bittersweet was set in North Carolina in the forties, I knew this was a book for me. This was my first book by Donna Everhart, but I suspect it won't be my last. Today's post is a review of the book that… Continue reading The Road to Bittersweet: An Audio Book Review and Giveaway
Congratulations to Linda Phillips who won the audio CD of "Indigo Girl" from last week's blog. ******** Recently I have met several young writers and bloggers. One of them who goes by the pen name of Julian Daventry, asked for volunteers to be part of her Shared-WIP four-part tag. Each blogger answers four sets of ten… Continue reading Shared WIP Blog Tag- Part I