Carol introduced this week’s Carnival of Beauty on her site with these words:

From snowflakes to fires, from the young to the old, from depression to joy, from warm to cold, from serious to hilarious, winter’s beauty threads its way through this week’s carnival.

I am so blessed to host this week during Sallie’s hiatus. Blessed because of not only the wonderful posts I have the honor of showcasing for you, but because of those post’s writers. God’s women are the true beauty you are about to encounter here…

I encourage you to bookmark this on your computer and browse through these 13 entries throughout your day when you’d like a pick-me-up. I appreciate the time Carol took in compiling them and even putting a cute wintery photo next to each submission. Fun! Her essay is about the dry winter Texas is experiencing. Let’s all pray for the heavens to open up and water the earth where she lives.

Other news: Sally at Children’s Publishing News has posted an excellent interview with Buzz Dixon, creator of the new inspirational manga for teen girls. I reviewed it here in my blog, and I noticed it’s climbing up the CBA Bestseller list. I liked it and am glad to see it doing well — I mentioned in my review that I thought it would be a great tool to have if you’re leading a group of teen girls — they can all relate to the characters in this comic, and it’s a quick, fun read — that glorifies the Gospel.

A couple of months ago, I reviewed another book, The World According to Narnia, by Jonathan Rogers. Since The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe has brought so much publicity to the books of C.S. Lewis, I wondered if Blogcritics might be interested in my review. So, I applied to become a reviewer — which means I can write reviews in my blog and send them to Blogcritics. This site gets over 50,000 hits a day! I’m not crazy about some of the ads on there — but I do want to introduce my favorite Christian books to as many people as possible.

Well, I was accepted as a reviewer on Monday — and they posted my first review yesterday — of The World According to Narnia. If you’ve read this book or any of the author’s Wilderking books, I’d love a comment or two on Blogcritics! It will stay on the front page for a few days, then make its way into the book review archives — but you can comment at any time.