istanbul, izmir, antalya, ankara escort bayan linkleri
istanbul escortAntalya Escortizmir escort ankara escort


Join the Flock! Litfuse Publicity Group blogger


Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner





May 10, 2011



Last weekend, I was looking for something fun and short to read, and a quick glance around my home led me to Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s How I Came to Be a Writer. It’s been years since I picked it up, and while reading it this time, I felt like I was cast under the author’s spell, though outwardly I kept one eye on guinea pigs, children, and a tennis-ball chasing dog frolicking around our sunny backyard.

In fact, the whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking, I’ve got to blog about this! There must be one of you at least who needs a jolt of writing inspiration, and this is the book to do it. Have you heard of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor? Her most famous work is Shiloh, which won the 1992 Newbery Award, but her long writing career has spanned seven decades as she’s penned over 130 books for readers of all ages. She’s definitely a good mentor for anyone longing to pursue the publication of fiction.

Ms. Naylor’s first writing break came when she was only 16 years old, and a former Sunday school teacher wrote to ask if she’d be interested in submitting a story to the church school paper she now edited. Right away, Phyllis came up with a sentimental baseball story called “Mike’s Hero.” Her teacher-turned-editor loved it and bought it for $4.67. (Since Phyllis was born in 1933, I’m assuming this happened around 1949.) She kept contributing more stories to church papers and magazines, then started her own humor column, told from the point of view of a 15-year-old boy named P.R. Tedesco. She wrote this for 25 years, and it helped her find her voice as a humor writer, as she describes:

Because I could write about anything at all in the column — friends, fears, parents, school, God — ideas were not hard to think up. By the time I discontinued the series, I had learned to write about serious subjects — segregation, prejudice, capital punishment, and the Vietnam War — in a sardonic way that would still interest teenage readers. The most difficult problem, strangely, was answering an occasional fan letter like this one:

Dear Mr. Tedesco,
You really tell it like it is, Man! What does your girlfriend think of your writing?

Naylor made the shift to publishing books in 1965, by submitting a selection of her short stories, which came out under the title, The Galloping Goat and Other Stories. This led to a another collection of short stories, and then at last, a contract for her first novel. I love how she describes the journey of moving from writing short pieces to writing a whole novel — since this is such a struggle for many writers. She said at first she made the mistake of “trying to throw in everything but the kitchen sink,” which caught the attention of an astute editor, who asked her to revise it. She rewrote the whole book following the editor’s suggestions for improvement, and What the Gulls Were Singing became her first published novel in 1967.

And she’s kept going. What I love about this autobiography is that Phyllis includes many of her early writings and then describes how she would improve them. She’s a writer who never stops growing, and this inspires me, because I can see that writing is a worthy passion of a lifetime. She didn’t stop and sit back on her laurels when she won the Newbery in 1992. She kept on going — in fact, Shiloh was only one book in the Shiloh trilogy.

Go Phyllis.

She is not a one-book wonder, like some of the great writers I’ve read in the past year: Margaret Mitchell, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger. Here are authors who wrote one book and then lost the magic, or the muse, or whatever it took to get their work out there. Phyllis is nearly 80 years old, and she’s still writing. Her latest book came out this year.

I couldn’t find a website under her name, but I found that she’s actually blogging here at Alice McKinley.com. Alice is a character from another one of her popular book series, and is based on her own life. At this point, she’s published 27 books in the series, and she’s going to end it at book 28. From glancing through the blog, I can see she’s extremely popular in Germany. In fact, one of her fans wrote that she couldn’t stand the length of time she had to wait until the books were translated into German, so she learned to read them in English.

I’m not familiar with the Alice series, so I’m unable to endorse their content, but can’t we as writers learn something from an author who’s won the top award in children’s literature and kept on going to reach the hearts of readers? On her blog, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor says this about her writing process:

I guess they “just come to me.” I don’t have any process. I simply try to become whichever girl I’m writing about–the whole girl–what her family sees of her, what her friends see, how she feels inside, what she worries about–all the things that are going on in her life. Writing is always “striking a balance” with humor, serious stuff, body worries, boyfriend problems, philosophical questions…. I have a very good memory of myself growing up and what was happening to me–what I was thinking about–at all ages, and these probably form the basis of my books.

I would love to hear Phyllis Reynolds Naylor speak at a conference someday. I wonder if she still gets out and speaks. She is someone like Katherine Paterson, whose keynote I heard in New York several years ago, and it still stays with me. I don’t know that I’ll ever find the courage to finish the novels I’ve started and abandoned, like orphaned children, on my computer, but at least I’ve been inspired to share her journey with you!

And it all began with this little girl, Phyllis, being read to by her parents. Her father would act out voices as he read Huckleberry Finn, and her mother kept reading great books out loud well into her children’s teen years.

Which reminds me — summer is around the corner. And I know the perfect book to start reading my 8-year-old son as soon as school is out. I have it sitting here right beside me, and I’m thinking maybe I’ll even start reading it tonight.

Care to join us?





March 26, 2011

I’m happy to join in this week’s blog tour for CJ Darlington’s second novel, Bound By Guilt, which is being released this month from Tyndale. CJ has been a blogging/writing friend of mine for several years, and I had the exciting privilege of interviewing her here last March when her debut novel, Thicker Than Blood, released.

Once again, I’m amazed at the depth of CJ’s writing. She focused her first novel on the relationship between two sisters, Christy and May Williams, showing how years of estrangement are restored through the rich bonds of sisterhood and faith. In her second book, she delves even more deeply into the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters.

Much of the action in both books takes place on a horse ranch in Colorado or at a used bookstore, Dawson’s Book Barn, which is based on the real Baldwin’s Book Barn in Pennsylvania where CJ lives and has worked as a book scout. (Didn’t even know what that meant until I read about it!) It’s an actual five-story barn, which holds over 300,000 books. I would definitely like to visit there — doesn’t that sound heavenly for all of us book lovers?

Bound By Guilt picks up about a year after the events in Thicker Than Blood. We’re now introduced to a new character, 16-year-old Roxi Gold, a girl with a troubled past, caught in a life of crime. I had a hard time putting this novel down, as CJ carefully lays out pieces of a puzzle that all come together in the end.

This novel is all the more intriguing because it involves the theft of a first edition copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I had no idea a rare book like that could be worth over $50,000! It was fun to learn about the world of antiquarian book scouting. The novel also shows how the little things we do, helping others, sharing a scripture or wisdom from the Bible, can go a long way toward giving someone hope. I really think this would be a great novel to pass along to teenagers, as well as any youth workers who spend time with teen girls.

Go CJ! We’re anxiously awaiting another book in the Dawson’s Book Barn saga!

Check out this beautiful cover and book trailer!

TitleTrakk.com Blog Tours Presents:

Bound by Guilt
by C.J. Darlington
Published by Tyndale House

Shuttled between foster homes, Roxi Gold will do anything to fit in. Soon she’s traveling the country stealing rare books from unsuspecting bookstores. Police officer Abby Dawson has seen the worst of society—and not just at work. One fateful night, both their lives are changed forever. One searches for justice, the other finds herself on the run. Will the power of forgiveness set them free?


***Here’s what others are saying about Bound By Guilt***

Great job! You kept me turning the pages.
Francine Rivers, Internationally best selling author

C.J. is a wonderful, talented writer . . . extraordinary . . .
Bodie Thoene, best-selling author of the A.D. Chronicles

This one engages your senses and reaches your heart.
Jerry B. Jenkins, NY Times best-selling author & owner of The Christian Writers Guild

Watch the book trailer:

About the Author:
C. J. Darlington won the 2008 Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild Operation First Novel contest with her first novel, Thicker Than Blood. She has been in the antiquarian bookselling business for over twelve years, scouting for stores similar to the ones described in her novels before cofounding her own online bookstore. In 2006 C. J. started the Christian entertainment Web site www.TitleTrakk.com with her sister, Tracy, and has been actively promoting Christian fiction through book reviews and author interviews. A homeschool graduate, she makes her home in Pennsylvania with her family and their menagerie of dogs and cats. Visit her website www.cjdarlington.com

QUICK LINKS:




March 22, 2011



I love to travel, don’t you? In my 20s, I enjoyed wandering the planet as an itinerant English teacher, but these days, I’m thankful if I get to travel a few hours from home. I do most of my globe trekking from the cheap seat of my armchair — and that is why I LOVED reading Sibella Giorello’s latest novel, The Mountains Bow Down.

Why? Because this author whisked me away to the wilds of Alaska! On a cruise ship, The Spirit of Odysseus. Where I got to see glaciers through sentences like this:

Smothered with evergreens, the steeps pointed to a sky so blue it whispered of eternity … And where a liquid silver sea lapped the rocky shore, a bald eagle surveyed the cold water for fish.

*Aah.*

Not only was the setting of this book thrilling, I also thoroughly enjoyed spending time in the mind of FBI agent, Raleigh Harmon, who uses the fascinating field of forensic geology to solve her crimes. And yes — a crime does take place aboard the ship. While most of the passengers are lounging, eating, and gazing at the gorgeous scenery, a woman goes missing and tragedy occurs. In the short span of a 5-day cruise, it’s up to Raleigh Harmon and her Tom Cruise-like sidekick, Special Agent Jack Stephenson, to piece together the mystery and put a monster behind bars.

So there’s a little romance on board, though Raleigh isn’t too swayed by Jack’s charm and stays focused on her mission of justice. As I read the book, I kept sneaking peeks at the author’s photo, thinking this book has to be somewhat autobiographical! Sibella Giorello grew up in Alaska and majored in geology. I could imagine her as the novel’s heroine, an FBI agent solving a crime based on microscopic dust fibers. It was so cool to learn how this is done. (Especially since I’m married to a geologist.)

Here’s the back cover copy of the book, if you’d like to learn more:

Everything’s going to work out. Time away always makes things better…

That’s what FBI Special Agent Raleigh Harmon believes as she boards a cruise to Alaska. A land of mountains and gems and minerals, The Last Frontier is a dream destination for this forensic geologist who’s hoping to leave behind a hectic work schedule and an engagement drained of romance.

But when a passenger goes missing and winds up dead, Raleigh’s vacation suddenly gets lost at sea. The ship’s security chief tries to rule the death a suicide, but Raleigh’s forensics background points to a much darker conclusion: Somewhere onboard, a ruthless murderer walks free.

Engulfed by one of her toughest cases yet, Raleigh requests assistance from the FBI and receives her nemesis-perpetual ladies man Special Agent Jack Stephanson. As the cruise ship sails through the Inside Passage, Raleigh has five days to solve a high-profile murder, provide consultation for a movie filming onboard, and figure out her increasingly complicated feelings for Jack-who might not be such a jerk after all.

And that’s only her work life. Family offers even more challenges. Joined on the cruise by her mother and aunt, Raleigh watches helplessly as disturbing rifts splinter her family.

Like the scenery that surrounds the cruise ship, Raleigh discovers a situation so steep and so complex that even the mountains might bow down before it.

I hope you have a chance to read this book, and if you click on the picture below, you also have a chance to win a getaway on your own Alaskan Cruise!

Sibella’s celebrating the release of The Mountains Bow Down with a blog tour, a Cruise prize pack worth over $500 and a Facebook Party! Don’t miss a minute of the fun.

One Grand Prize winner will receive:

  • A $500 gift certificate toward the cruise of their choice from Vacations To Go.
  • The entire set of the Raleigh Harmon series.

To enter click one of the icons below. Then tell your friends. And enter soon – the giveaway ends on 4/1! The winner will be announced at Sibella’s Raleigh Harmon Book Club Party on FB April 5th, 2011! Don’t miss the fun – prizes, books and gab!

Enter via E-mail Enter via FacebookEnter via Twitter

About the Facebook Party: Join Sibella and fans of the Raleigh Harmon series on April 5th at 5:00 pm PST (6 MST, 7 CST & 8 EST) for a Facebook Book Club Party. Sibella will be giving away some fun prizes, testing your trivia skills and hosting a book chat about the Raleigh Harmon books. Have questions you’d like to chat about – leave them on the Event page.


Sibella Giorello grew up in Alaska and majored in geology at Mount Holyoke College. After riding a motorcycle across the country, she worked as a features writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Her stories have won state and national awards, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize. She now lives in Washington state with her husband and sons. Find out more about Sibella and her other books at her website. www.sibellagiorello.com




February 21, 2011




I just finished reading Kathi Lipp’s really fun book, The Me Project, and I’m happy to join in the blog tour to help spread the word.

I started reading it a couple of weeks ago without having any idea what my “project” might be. After slipping this book into my purse and carrying it around to basketball games, school pick-up lines, and doctor’s appointments, I feel like Kathi Lipp has become a friend, someone who wants me to seek God’s best for my life.

The book is divided into 21 “projects” that will help you take small steps toward dreams you may have on hold. It would be a great resource for women’s book clubs and church groups, since one of the main points Kathi Lipp makes is that friends can hold you accountable as you make progress toward your goals.

Here’s a little about the book:

Has that rush to make (and break) New Year’s resolutions already waned? According to Daniel Pink, author of 
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, taking small steps every day will not only help you stay committed to your goal, 
but will also help you ultimately achieve that goal when obstacles come up. Author Kathi Lipp wants you and your friends to live out those dreams—and have some fun along the way.

As women, we forget the goals and dreams of our younger years. The busyness of everyday life gets 
in the way. To-do lists replace goals. The Me Project provides women with fun and creative ways to bring back the sense of purpose and vitality that comes with living out the plans and dreams God has planted in our hearts. Kathi Lipp’s warm tone and laugh-out-loud humor motivates women to take daily steps toward intentional goals. The end result? We get back our lives and enjoy living in the confidence of a purposeful life in spite of our chaotic schedules.

This handy guide coaches women to do one simple thing toward achieving our goals each day for three weeks. A woman experiencing the exhilaration of a rediscovered life offers more as a wife, mother, friend, volunteer, career woman.

Now you get a chance to meet Kathi Lipp as she shares how you can get started on your own “Me Project.” And if you leave a comment below, you’ll be entered in to win a really cool Starbucks gift basket full of caffeine-loaded goodies that will certainly energize you and your accountability buddies to reach for the stars!



Three Super-Simple Ways to Kick Start Living Your Dreams — In the Next 15 Minutes
by Kathi Lipp

Is there a dream that God has given you, but you are waiting until the kids are grown and you have money in the bank before you get started?

You may not be able to enroll in a month-long pastry making class or take a week off of work to get started on your novel, but today you can take three little baby steps to making your dream a day-to-day reality.

1. Go Public with It.
It’s a little scary to tell the world what you want to do when you grow up — but this one little step could get you closer to living your dream than almost any other. Plus — it takes very little time, and you don’t have to raid your kid’s college fund to make it happen.

When you gather up all your courage and tell your best friend, “I want to learn how to paint,” suddenly she remembers an old art book she has laying around she would love to give you, or her friend from church who teaches art classes. The people you know and love want to be a resource. Give them the privilege of being a part of making your dream happen.

2. Join an Online Group.
This is one of the simplest — and cheapest — ways to start exploring your passion. Find out who else is talking about restoring antiques and listen to their conversation. Start by Googling your interest along with the term “online groups.” You’ll be amazed with the number of people who want to talk about the proper way to care for 1950’s lunchboxes as much as you do.

3. Don’t be Afraid to Pray.
I remember the first time I put an offer in on a house — I wanted it more than I had wanted almost anything else in my life. While I knew that I had dozens of other people praying on my behalf, I was too scared to pray.

I didn’t want God to tell me no. I was afraid to pray until my co-worker Kim asked me (in a loving, kind way), why I didn’t believe that God wanted His best for me. Don’t be afraid to pray — as with anything amazing in my life, the path is never what I expected, but it has always been obvious that God’s hand has been on it the whole way.

Kathi Lipp is a busy conference and retreat speaker, currently speaking each year to thousands of women throughout the United States. She is the author of The Husband Project and The Marriage Project, serves as food writer for Nickelodeon, and has had articles published in several magazines, including Today’s Christian Woman and Discipleship Journal. Kathi and her husband, Roger, live in California and are the parents of four teenagers and young adults. For more information visit her website.



Grand Prize Giveaway: Deluxe Starbucks Coffee Gift Basket

* Three 2.5-oz. bags of Starbucks coffee
(Sumatra, House Blend, and French Roast)
* Tazo black tea
* Starbucks marshmallow cocoa
* Almond roca
* Almond roca buttercrunch toffee cookies
* White chocolate and raspberry cookies
* 2 Starbucks mugs
* Keepsake black bamboo basket

$62 value




November 22, 2010



As a former English teacher and bonafide bookaholic, I’m always seeking like-minded souls who embrace classic literature. So you can imagine my joy when I stumbled onto The Red Blazer Girls, a brand new middle grade series, written by high school English teacher Michael D. Beil, whose characters are smart, wholesome, and literary.

I really wasn’t looking for anything new to read. My nightstand is already so full of books, I can hardly find my alarm clock. But as I breezed through the library with my kids the other day, The Ring of Rocamadour (book 1 of the series) jumped off the shelf at me. I couldn’t resist when I opened it up and read the first paragraph:

For as far back as I can remember, I have told everyone I know that I am going to be a writer. And it’s not just some idle dream. I have been a busy girl, and my hard drive is bulging with the results of this ambition: a heaping assortment of almost-but-not-quite-finished short stories and at least three this-time-I’m-really-off-to-a-great-start-and-I-mean-it novels. Unfortunately, every single thing I have written — until now, that is — is fatally flawed.

Ha! Did Mr. Beil sneak over to my house and read my diary? Or, since this is his debut novel, are we actually reading his diary?

This snappy writing continues throughout the book, and I couldn’t put it down. So, who are the Red Blazer Girls? Well, although the book cover only shows three, there are actually four girls in the group, in the seventh grade at New York City’s exclusive St. Veronica’s School: Sophie, Margaret, Rebecca, and Leigh Ann. In The Ring of Rocamadour, the girls find themselves caught up in a mystery when the quirky Mrs. Harriman asks for their help solving a 20-year-old puzzle. She’s seeks clues to a treasure hunt initiated by her father for the sake of his granddaughter, on her 14th birthday. Unfortunately, he died before giving her the card, and the birthday gift has never been found.

The Red Blazer Girls are in, and their adventures involve digging through old volumes of the Harvard Classics, quizzing their English teacher on his vast knowledge of Charles Dickens, and even math equations. In fact, several pages of the book take readers through a math problem that made the subject exciting and fun — even for me! I probably haven’t thought about the Pythagorean theorem since high school, but it comes in handy when the girls are trying to pinpoint a secret spot where the next clue may be hidden.

Sophie is an amazing narrator — I love her! I want more books narrated by her. Here’s what she says about herself:

Another confession: call me a geek if you must, but I just love books. I am absolutely obsessed with them. Go on, name any kids’ book or series of books, and I probably have it. I spend so much of my allowance at the local bookstore that Margaret thinks I have some kind of compulsive shopping disorder … Nothing against the library, but there’s something different about having the book within reach when, say, I absolutely need to go back and reread that part in Anne of Green Gables that makes me cry every time I read it. (And speaking of books, if you’re the person who borrowed my well-worn but much loved hardcover copy of The Secret Garden, please return it — no questions asked.)

Ooh… I love this writing. I can see why an acquiring editor at Knopf fell in love. As soon as I finished the first book, I had to start right away on the next one The Vanishing Violin. The clues here involve more verbal logic than math, but I also found this book a fascinating read!

I predict middle school English teachers and librarians will snap this series up — and hopefully publishers will keep up the trend of bringing out books that expand minds and build character in readers.

The Red Blazer Girls are good wholesome reading for girls — with no sleaze or vampires. Thank you, Mr. Beil! Keep ’em coming!






August 17, 2010

Over the summer, while browsing through my Auburn University alumni magazine, I was surprised to learn that all 4,000 incoming freshmen are being encouraged to read a book together: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.


Wow. That’s a major book club, don’t you think?

It’s part of the Common Book program that more than 100 universities are starting to participate in. This reminds me of our own community’s Big Read last spring, when we all read To Kill a Mockingbird together. Can you see how a bookish person likes me gets excited about these types of programs?

So, I had Three Cups of Tea on my mind all summer, wondering what’s so great about it that an entire university would be reading it together. Sure, it was a #1 New Times Bestseller for months, but just because it’s selling millions of copies doesn’t mean I’m going to fall in love with it.

But I did. Oh … there is something rich between the covers of this book that reached the core of me. It’s changed the way I view the world. I hope you’ll get a chance to read it, if you haven’t yet. Especially if you’re a woman. Read it, and you’ll understand.

The story begins with Greg Mortenson’s failure to climb the K2 mountain in Pakistan, the second highest mountain in the world. He almost froze to death one night when the porter carrying his heavy backpacks disappeared far ahead. Greg wandered around lost for a while, and ended up in a village called Korphe.

While staying in this village a while to recover his strength, he was overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of the people. There were children everywhere, and when he asked the elders where these kids go to school, he got some sad looks.

He discovered dozens of children huddled together in the freezing cold scribbling their math equations into the dirt with sticks. From this point on, he vowed that he would someday return to this village and build them a school.

The book is a page turner. He goes from one hard time to another — living out of his car trying to scrape together his own meager living and keep his dream alive. He writes 300 letters on a rented typewriter until some kind soul shows him how to use the “cut and paste” option on a computer, and then he sends out 280 more. At last he finds a person willing to back him up financially so he can build that first school, Dr. Jean Hoerni.

The rest of the book recounts the trials and adventures Mortenson encounters as he builds that first school in Korphe — which leads to launching a whole organization, Central Asia Institute, dedicated to promoting world peace through education. He builds not only schools, but also relationships with people in the war-torn regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.


As you’re reading, you suddenly get the big picture that schools lead to educated minds who are less likely to be recruited by terrorists, and who are less likely to strap bombs to themselves and blow things up.

You realize books lead to peace. And so Mortenson’s mission becomes your own.

There’s now a Young Reader’s edition, which has full-color pictures and a simplified text. I think this would be a fantastic book for teachers or parents to read out loud. Students can also participate in the Pennies for Peace program.



The title of the book comes from the way in which the people in central Asia conduct business. Mortenson’s mentor, Haji Ali, teaches him:

The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die.

If you have a few minutes, I encourage you to watch this short interview with Greg Mortenson. You’ll be amazed. I can definitely understand why an entire campus will be reading and discussing this book together, and who knows how many new dreams will be launched from this shared experience.

(I’ve heard the story continues, with the 2009 published sequel, Stones into Schools.)

All photos are complements of Central Asia Institute.




July 23, 2010



When my youngest daughter slipped this book into our library tote, I thought, “Huh? What’s she trying to say to me?” Secretly, I couldn’t wait to read it, and it made its happy way to the top of our reading pile.

Rarely do I review a picture book, out of the hundreds we read every year. But this one was too adorable to keep to myself, and it also struck a deep chord within me.

I wondered how author Kate Feiffer would handle this topic. I think, deep down, many of us mothers worry that maybe something we’ve said or done will mess up our children’s lives. (Do you?)

The narrator begins her story by telling us how wonderful her mom is:

She makes people smile.
She makes people clean.
She gives hungry people food.
She takes people where they need to go, and then she brings them back home again …

After praising her mom a bit, she then poses the question, “If my mom is such a nice mom, why is she trying to ruin my life?”

She expresses five ways her mom is ruining her life, including such horrors as talking too loudly in public and preventing her from having dangerous fun. The narrator begins to hatch a top-secret escape plan that will bring her freedom. Except, in her imagination, the plan ends up with the police putting her mom in jail, which isn’t so great.

In the same way Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie takes readers on a journey of one hilarious event leading to another, Feiffer’s tale becomes more and more outrageous. Next, the little girl’s dad must get involved to help get the mother out of jail, and she goes on to explain several ways her dad is also trying to ruin her life.

But if both her parents end up in jail for trying to ruin her life, who will take care of her? Who will feed her supper and read her bedtime stories?

It was a relief for me to read this book because it brought humor to the delicate situation of how today’s parents feel the need to overprotect. And since it’s told from a child’s point of view, young readers will be able to relate to the character and realize … hey, other kids have to deal with this too.

I sometimes feel jealous of women who raised families 50 years ago, when the world was a much safer place. They could kiss their children goodbye in the morning and let them walk to school, along with a friendly pack of neighborhood kids. They could let their kids explore the town by bike, like Opie in The Andy Griffith Show.

In my hometown, a little girl was murdered a few years ago when she went off by herself riding a bike, and I remember thinking, “I can’t believe it’s become too dangerous to let kids ride bikes these days!” So now all our bike riding is done as a family, with parental supervision. Like the mother in this book, I drive people places and I bring them home because I want to know where they are, who they’re with, and what they’re doing. But it can be exhausting, all the keeping up!

This is a reassuring book for moms (and dads) that what we’re doing is important work, and it’s no small thing to make a little girl feel loved and safe. Diane Goode’s illustrations capture the humor on every page, with enough detail to render multiple readings an enjoyable task. (Goode illustrated another of my all-time favorite picture books, Cynthia Rylant’s When I Was Young in the Mountains.)

After checking out Kate Feiffer’s website, it looks like she and Goode have teamed up to create another humorous picture book, But I Wanted a Baby Brother! I’ll have to add this one to my reading list.

Here’s a cute video where girls explain how their moms embarrass them. I hope it make you smile!




June 7, 2010



I’ve been browsing through some of my favorite writing books recently, as I’m trying to make the transition from writing nonfiction to fiction. I wanted to share with you one of my favorites, Bird by Bird. If you’ve never read this book, you’re in for a treat!

Below is the review I wrote for Amazon, in 2005:

I absolutely love this book. I wish I could have read it years ago when I was in college, laboring through my English major, taking myself way too seriously. It should be required reading for everyone who is fascinated with words on a page.

It’s the kind of book you keep along beside your dictionary and thesaurus, and whatever else you keep as a reference. It helps just knowing that Anne is there, between the pages, poking fun at you as you agonize over a first draft. You look at her book cover, and you know what she’s thinking, what she’d tell you if she were sitting beside your computer.

“Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t — and, in fact, you’re not supposed to — know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing,” she writes.

Before I read BIRD BY BIRD, I always had this fear of getting started with a story. Well, I guess I still do, but at least I know Lamott’s take on it. I love research, gathering information and quotes. I love talking to people about what they’re passionate about, people I interview for a story. And the books! And underlined sentences! And articles and papers and poems and scriptures and movies and spilled cups of coffee. Just one more thing, I tell myself. Then I’ll start…

After reading this book, I know it’s okay to feel that way, but the way to write is just to get something on paper. At some point in life, you have to move beyond your private journal to connect with an audience because there’s someone out there who may understand you, and you’ll never know if you don’t try.

Lamott tells her writing students on the first day of class that “good writing is about telling the truth.” She says “an author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean. Aren’t you?”

That’s all we can do as writers, is to keep trying to tell our versions of the truth, as we move around in our little worlds surrounded by the Truth.

The title of the book, BIRD BY BIRD, came about from an episode in her brother’s life. He’d put off starting a report on birds, which was due the next day at school. Surrounded by books, paper, pencils, and “immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead,” her brother had sunk into despair. Then Anne’s father sat down next to him, put his arm around her brother’s shoulder and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

That’s a magnificent philosophy for anything, for life. Take it slowly, one step at a time. I think I could sit here and quote every page of this book, but if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go start reading it through again.

(Thank you, Lauren, for telling me about it!)

Note: This book does contain profanity, which might be offensive to some readers.




June 1, 2010



I reviewed this book nearly five years ago on Amazon, and I don’t think I’ve ever posted it here. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is still in print, and I noticed it’s garnered 549 reviews, from 1996 to 2010. WOW. I’d call this book a success from both author and publisher standpoint. Many books barely stay in print 3 years, much less garner hundreds of reviews over a 14-year time period.

Educating your child never goes out of style.

I used this method to teach three of my children to read, and I was thinking about pulling it off the shelf this summer just for something fun to do with my five-year-old. I’m a lot more laid back than I was a decade ago. Now I think … what’s the rush?

Parents feel so much pressure to help their kids get an early start in reading … but kids need to be active and healthy more than anything. Let them run, jump, explore, play, dig, swim, touch, slide, kick! I see so many children with eyeglasses now — I’m wondering if all this early reading push might be straining their eyesight. I even saw a commercial recently where a mother was teaching her baby to read before it could even talk. WHY??!!

But if your child is showing signs of reading readiness, here’s a good way to go about the process. So, without further ado, here’s my Amazon review, published in September 2005:

SIMPLIFY YOUR TEACHING; SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE

I’m using this book to teach my third child how to read, so I think it’s high time I wrote a review of it. Parents, this is the only book you need to get started on the most important skill they’ll ever learn. And YOU can be the one to teach them!

There are lots of fancy-schmancy phonics programs with bells and whistles — and games and prizes and treasure chests and eight million little stickers and tiny books to keep up with. If you like all that, and need all that, then more power to you. I can barely keep up with everything else I have going on, much less a complicated method of teaching my child to read.

Simplify your life, and just get started. For less than 20 bucks, you’ll have your child well on his or her way to reading.

OK, the title is a little misleading. It’s not EASY, by any means. Especially if you have an active four-year-old boy. Let him do his lessons standing up, lying on the floor, jumping up and down the stairs, out in the yard — he’s active, and let his gross motor skills be used while he’s learning. It takes 10 minutes of super-focusing — but in between the different parts of each lesson, let your child move around. You want him to love reading!

Also, don’t feel like you have to do the writing task of each lesson. My girls love to write, so this was fun for them. But I skipped it with my son until he was more ready to hold a pencil. Actually, we did some lessons out in the driveway, with a fat piece of chalk. He had a great time and usually ended up drawing a whole train system or town after we finished his lesson.

It works. It really does. And it’s amazing to be sitting next to your child the first time they learn to read the word, “see.” Or “mom.” (“Mom! I just read the word ‘mom!'” they’ll say.) It’s something you’ll always remember doing together.

You don’t have to be a reading teacher. You don’t need any special skills or experience. You read the script in red print. You stay on task. And you finish the lesson. Then you praise your child and tell her how smart and wonderful she is!

With each of my kids, we made a VERY SIMPLE chart that had 100 squares on it. I just used a ruler and made some lines and put numbers in them — didn’t even use the computer. It took 5 minutes. Then, after we did a lesson, I let the child put a sticker over the number. Any kind of sticker. All those hodge-podge sheets of stickers you end up with — they work great for a reading chart.

I let each child pick a reward they wanted to receive when they finished all 100 of the lessons. That gave them great incentive to get through the whole book.

For extra practice, I recommend the Bob books, which you can see listed on this site. Kids love these books — they’re adorable. Scholastic makes a good set of beginner readers as well. But you don’t need anything else besides this one book — the little Bob readers can just help reinforce.

As a busy parent, this is one of the most enjoyable things you’ll ever do with your child. But don’t feel like you have to rush — do a few lessons, and if you need to take a break, then do. I highly recommend Raymond and Dorothy Moore’s BETTER LATE THAN EARLY if you’re the type to freak out that your three-year-old can’t write his ABC’s. Too many parents push their children and ruin their eyesight at a young age.

Have fun watching the light go on!




May 18, 2007

If you enjoy keeping up with current book news, I’ve compiled a short list of good sites that offer reviews.

Please feel free to add your site or blog to the comments if you frequently review Christian books or other types of inspirational media.

All of the following sites are ones I highly recommend:

Active Christian Media
Books for Moms
CBA Marketplace
Christian Book Previews
Christian Children’s Book Review
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
Christian Women Online
Faithful Reader
Kidsread
The Midwest Book Review
Novel Journey
Novel Reviews
Publishers Weekly
The Parrot’s Perch
The Writing Life
Title Trakk

I wish you all a safe and happy summer, filled with joy — and great books! Let’s get back in touch in the fall.

Blessings,
Heather

By: Heather Ivester in: Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments & Trackbacks (8)