Reminiscent of the 2010 Newbery medal winner MOON OVER MANIFEST, Barbara O'Connor's latest middle grade novel, WISH (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2016) is the story of a young girl who feels abandoned by her parents, is forced to live with strangers, and searches to understand her past. Like MOON, it tugs on the reader's heart strings and shows the… Continue reading Wish: A Review and Audio CD Giveaway
This is the reason I love well-written historical fiction: It draws me into a place and time that I am barely familiar with, brushes me with information and imagery, and leaves me wanting to know more. Enter Blue Birds by Caroline Starr Rose (G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Group USA). Written from the points of view of two fictional… Continue reading Blue Birds and an ARC Giveaway!
Congratulations to Connie Saunders who won Liesl's Ocean Rescue in last week's giveaway. For those who didn't win, you have three more chances to win books this year, for yourself or as a holiday gift for a special young reader in your life. I'm happy to share these books with my fellow bibliophiles! ********* Aptly titled River… Continue reading River Music: A Review, An Interview, And a Giveaway!
Congratulations to Vida Zuljevic who won the good braider audio recording in last week's giveaway. I met Diane Chamberlain at WNBA's Bibliofeast in 2013 and purchased her book, Necessary Lies, despite telling myself that I had enough books and wasn't going to buy one more! But when I saw it was set in North Carolina and written from… Continue reading Necessary Lies- A Review and a Giveaway!
Last week Lisa Kline explained the editorial process behind creating her Sisters in All Seasons series. Today she shares more of that process as well as her own personal adventure writing the books. Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt… Continue reading "What Else Do You Have?'" – Part II and a Giveaway
I would like to think that I would have enjoyed Frances O'Roark Dowell's book, Chicken Boy, even if it wasn't set in North Carolina. But it sure helped to be able to picture the rural farm areas around the triangle region of North Carolina that are slowly being gobbled up by suburban development. Fifteen years ago I… Continue reading Chicken Boy and a Giveaway!
The only thing that I didn't like about Shannon Hitchcock's debut novel, The Ballad of Jessie Pearl, (Namelos, 2012) is that it ended. The fact that I wanted to know what happened to Jessie, proves that this well-written historical fiction is a must-read for young adult girls, as well as their mothers and grandmothers. The time is… Continue reading The Ballad of Jessie Pearl & A Giveaway!