I am very grateful not to have the responsibility for deciding who goes first for the coronavirus vaccine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions.

I recently received Noah and the Eight Trucks of Hanukkah by Nancy Rips from Pelican Publishing for a possible review. Coincidentally, in the next (Nov/Dec) issue of Horn Book Magazine, Marjorie Ingall wrote an article, “What Makes a Good Hanukkah Book?”

I am pretty sure this is not what Mama meant when she said everybody should pull their own little red wagon. You may even question the term “red” at this point, but in its origins, that was its color.

In the world of readers, one thing tends to lead to another and if that weren’t enough, one reader leads to another. My sister Ruth led me to her friend Joan Creighton who became a reader of this blog.

As long as a writer sits alone with her words, there is no threat. However, there is something about producing those words and stringing them together that seems to call for sharing them, which brings up the next layer of wanting the very best words on the very best string.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng opens near the end of the story with Isabelle (Izzy) Richardson burning down her family’s home.

Roots in North Mississippi for me, in New Hampshire for my daughter-in-law, leave us looking at sad trees in South Mississippi. As green leaves turn brown and drop, we long for autumn.

Girls of Brackenhill, an intriguing newly published mystery by Kate Moretti, begins when Hannah Maloney is summonsed to her Aunt Fae’s death in a suspicious car accident.

First, I will give the gist of the scientific explanation of the scene from my first walk of the day as the sun joins me in greeting the morning.

On the front flap and the back cover of his new book, Don Tate says, “That’s what stories do. Protest injustice. Soothe. Teach. Inspire. Connect. Stories save lives.” Then he writes William Still and Hi

My first vote was in the multigenerational Butler Country Store, converted for the day to a voting precinct. I was proud to become a part of the process.

Added to my love of biography and history, I had a personal reason for wanting to read the book that I review today. I remember as a child that people often said that Mama looked like Eleanor Roosevelt

You haven’t asked about my favorite icon or tab to push on my computer, but I am going to tell you anyway. I love to push “send.”

Looking back a year, celebrating a birthday during this pandemic took on a whole new look. Last year, sisters, children, grandchildren, and a niece gathered and went out to eat in a local restaurant specializing in Southern cuisine and had a splendid time, little knowing what the next year would bring.

To be fair, the cardiologist having only been aware of my history since he put three stents in my heart a year ago, did not intend to be funny. In order for you to recognize the joke when it comes, I will begin with a bit of backstory.

Michael Tunnell discovered a diary in the Utah State Historical Society in Salt Lake City, kept by a third grade class in the Topaz Camp in Utah. This group of Japanese American children wrote and drew pictures of the happenings during that year.

Barbed wire fences, in the country, are useful for marking off which part we have to mow and which part the neighbors have to mow. Dogs, Shetland ponies when they can discover an opening, kids, and cats pay little attention to these markers which brings me to today’s topic.

If you have never thought of a picture book about intestines and stomach contents, much less one that is clever and beautiful, get ready!

My latest writing publication simmered in my head and has been whittled into several forms since the real-life occasion in my junior high classroom that inspired it a number of years ago.

When a book begins with a six-year-old village boy in a dirt clearing watching his perfectly still uncle get six ritual lines sliced across his face with a sharp knife, you know the book is not set in Kansas.