On Tuesday, December 15, her name was Cyan. She stopped, properly distancing herself from the car window and asked, “Did you get your list of substitutions?” and then, “Were they all right?”

Move a generation beyond the Vietnam War and Toby’s summer in When Zachary Beaver Came to Town and pick up with Toby’s daughter in the 9/11 era in The Ambassador of Nowhere, Texas. A reader who loved the first book will have to wonder if the second measures up.

Notification of former governor William Winter’s death came from my Mississippi Today link, but it felt personal. My first knowledge of him came when I was a first-grader in his mother’s classroom.

Michael Rosen, well-known for his children’s books like the classic We’re Going on a Bear Hunt!, takes a different turn in The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II.

Let me begin by saying that 2020 was not my fault. I had my black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Year’s Day as I have every year. As this crazy year comes to a close, I have challenged myself to think of 20 positives and 20 negatives.

Shannon Hitchcock’s editor Andrea Pinckney said her middle grade novel about a Syrian refugee was missing something when she turned it in, but she offered to read it again. In the meantime, Shannon discovered the book Escape from Aleppo by N. H. Senzai and wondered if the missing piece was a Muslim voice.

Joseph has lost his staff. The moss on the manger roof is splotchy. The donkey has no ears and the cow only one of her horns. Since the nativity scene came from Sears and was inexpensive in the first place, why don’t we just replace it?

Sean Dietrich had under consideration as a title for this book The Grinch Actually Succeeded This Year or Deck the Halls with Disinfectant.

My relationship with Mr. Scrooge began when I was six and my father played him in the production by Hardy Station Baptist Church. I don’t recall a lot about it, but I put importance on what I remember.

The stories of two women switch back and forth during two different times across a black walnut table in The Christmas Table by Donna VanLiere. Joan Creighton, in May 1972, watches her husband John take the wood from his pickup truck.

At a recent writer’s workshop, a suggested writing prompt was the word “scars” with the notion that behind the scar might be a story. Indeed, my very first scar not only had a story but became an item of usefulness – though getting it was pretty scary for a four-year-old.

You can’t make this stuff up! As I read the nonfiction book Goat Castle by Karen Cox, I pictured trying to sell a novel with its plotline and decided it would be much too strange.

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.