The excitement started midmorning when I discovered a red wasp hovering around the porch rocker where I intended to sit to have a phone chat with my sister. Not wanting to share the space with a likely biter, I got the fly swatter.

Books can be inspirational, educational, and thought-provoking. All of that is good, but sometimes a reader needs to dive into one, knowing the value is just entertainment. When I saw David Baldacci’s new book Daylight on Net Galley’s list, I knew that was exactly what was in store, and I was ready.

When I hear an idea from divergent sources within a few days, I consider it a sign that I might need to think about it. The first time I heard it involved Simone Biles’s competition at the Olympic trials.

The War Nurse, Tracey Enerson Wood’s new historical fiction novel based on a true story set during World War I, reads like a memoir with the protagonist as the narrator. Early in her life, Julia Stimson encounters prejudice that will follow her intermittently as long as she lives.

A recent trip with our daughter and son-in-law to the Mississippi Agricultural Museum brought back memories – some fond and some not so fond. I think maybe that’s the purpose of museums.

Bears or Wolves – take your choice. In March 1944 in the Ukraine, Emil and Adeline Martel and their extended family must decide whether they will wait for the Soviet bear’s incursion or follow the wolves – Nazi’s who have promised to protect pureblooded Germans and lead them to safety.

Stress coming from happy days after a siege of dark ones brings one of life’s peculiarities. Difficult adjustments often accompany change even when it is for the better.

After reading Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls, I knew to jump at the chance offered by Net Galley to read an ARC of her new book The Woman They Could Not Silence.

At the recent JambaLAya conference, Newbery Award winner Linda Sue Park used a fairly common activity to illustrate her point that writers should not drive their readers crazy by getting things wrong when they write outside their area of familiarity.

The backstory of the book, Seeing the Elephant by Virginia Howard, formed my Friday blog. Frank Reaugh, renowned artist and teacher, took three ladies and three of his teenaged students including Virginia’s mother and namesake aunt on a two-month excursion to see the newly opened Grand Canyon. The book is based on the diary kept by the aunt.

A couple of decades ago, one Virginia (Virginia Howard) sat next to another (me) in New Orleans at a meeting of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. In our small talk, she told me of a book she had been yearning to write.

Wendy S. Swore in her recently released middle grade novel Strong Like the Sea, makes her setting almost like another character. Alex was born in Hawaii to an atypical family.

I asked this seven-year-old grandson to pose for my picture to illustrate this blog and questioned if his teacher ever told him to keep his eyes on his own paper. “Well, she used to,” he said, stretching his arms into a semicircle, “before we got these things around our desks.”

I was drawn to The Immortals by Steven T. Colis when I saw the blurb on Net Galley about this book, published this month, focusing on a group of medical chaplains and a young Black petty officer who were heroes in the sinking of the Dorchester on February 3, 1943.

A favorite activity when I taught kindergarten, for the children and for me, was the old “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” motion song. I’ve had to give up the “knees and toes” segment over the last few months since my right knee has cried, “Enough!”

Should you be in the mood for a cozy mystery, let me recommend Murder in a Scottish Garden by Traci Hall, just out on May 25. Be prepared for the Scottish dialect throughout that takes you right into that Scottish garden and surrounding seaside community of Nairn.

What a legacy! Eric Carle departed this world at 91 years of age leaving behind more than 70 books translated into a number of languages with his most famous, A Very Hungry Caterpillar, selling more than 50 million copies.

In 1943, Allie Bert Tucker, but please skip the “Allie,” knows that it is her fault when her mother and baby sister die in a difficult childbirth in the mountains of North Carolina.

Juliana Urtubey of Nevada, national teacher of the year from Nevada, in an exuberant appearance on morning television declared that teaching for her was Joy and Justice. This year, as never before, those two words have been needed by educators and their students.

Having decided I was in the mood for an old-fashioned Western, I requested an advance reading copy of High Country Justice by Nik James (to be published on May 25) on the Net Galley site. The first chapter, with four dead bad guys and a pretty girl arriving on the scene, let me know that the book would fit the genre.