I used to get a laugh from my junior high students when they came in lauding their latest boyfriend/girlfriend as being “so cute.” My warning was, “You have to be careful with looks. I married a cute guy with wavy black hair.”

As she has done so well before, Karen Cushman returns to history to set her novel, War and Millie McGonigle, in the place where her husband grew up. A young girl in San Diego during World War II turns out to deal with issues that will be remarkably timely.

As we get ready to celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, I have been thinking about how different these two mothers were and reflecting that there are many ways one can mother, never error-free, but well.

The tone for Jamie Sumner’s book Roll with It is set in the first line, “It’s kind of hard to watch The Great British Bake Off over plates of Stouffer’s lasagna.”

I do my last tribute to this year’s Poetry Month with three spine poems, an enjoyable exercise I stumbled upon a couple of years ago. Simply stack some books so that the order of their names on the spine make a poem.

Last month, another member of the de Grummond Book Group continued a conversation with me via email after the meeting, recommending that I read The Push by Asley Audrain. She forewarned me that it was not a light read but brought real-life issues into a compelling story line.

In this quarantining time, we have a celebration that can be observed from a safe distance! Poem in Your Pocket Day falls yearly on a selected day during Poetry Month.

So start with a talented writer of historical fiction, give her a great-great-grandmother born in 1870s Shanghai, and turn her loose to do extensive research – and there is a good chance that a fine novel will result.

I’ve had a common experience with other writers from what I can read and hear in that Covid has brought a brain freeze for our normal writing practices, followed by experimenting with forms of writing outside our comfort zones.

It is very appropriate in this Drop Everything and Read Day set in honor of Beverly Cleary’s birthday, that I review a book whose characters would have been good friends with Ramona, the star of many of Beverly’s books.

April has long been designated as poetry month. My fondness for this genre goes back to my earliest memories with Mama reading poetry aloud to us – some we understood and some we did not. I loved the sounds even when the words took flight right over my head.

Ava Morgyn begins her debut novel with abundant problems for seventeen-year-old Cat when her adored grandmother dies. Ten years before, her unstable mother had dumped Cat off with the grandmother with nothing but a deck of tarot cards – minus one.

My daughter Anna, teacher turned librarian, and I don’t usually have serious disagreements about books. And truthfully, this one isn’t major. We are both in mourning with the death of Beverly Cleary at 104 this past weekend.

In her debut novel, The Sweet Taste of Muscadines, Pamela Terry puts words in the mouth of her protagonist Lila Bruce Breedlove to set up the premise of the book as she returns home after her mother’s unexpected death.

With the latest atrocities in Atlanta, saying “Tut-tut” and shaking my head doesn’t seem to be nearly enough.

The verse novel, Home Is Not a Country, is labelled for young adults and teens, but we shouldn’t let them have all the enjoyment.

Coming as no surprise to anyone would be a comment that I love words. I do show partiality in that I like some better than others. Maybe they tickle my throat, maybe they sing as they emerge, or maybe they nail an idea perfectly.

I have just listened to a book recommended to me long ago by my mother and wondered what she was thinking to give that book to a child hardly past her first decade. Recently, I have heard several references to Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton.

This week seems to have set people everywhere thinking about an anniversary that comes mid-March if not on the exact same day for everybody. One news group even suggested sharing the last photo taken before Covid confinement began.

In Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aeorspace Engineer by Traci Sorell, Mary Golda Ross ignores expectations and plunges right into a mathematical world.