I saw this book tag on Emily’s blog For The Bookish and immediately wanted to do it! It looked super fun and also I’ve never done a tag before. So here we go. 1. Name a book you’re embarrassed you haven’t read. Um, well, that’s a lot. The complete Pilgrim’s Progress? (I recently learned that my edition was abridged.) Emma? To Kill a Mockingbird? The huge stack of books in my room that I keep meaning to read? 2. What is the strangest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark? Oh, dear. For the most part I use bobby pins, but the strangest thing? Hmm… Oh! Once I used a piece…
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Book Review: The Storybook of Legends, by Shannon Hale
“At Ever After High, an enchanting boarding school, the children of fairytale legends prepare themselves to fulfill their destinies as the next generation of Snow Whites, Prince Charmings and Evil Queens…whether they want to or not. Each year on Legacy Day, students sign the Storybook of Legends to seal their scripted fates. For generations, the Village of Book End has whispered that refusing to sign means The End-both for a story and for a life. As the daughter of the Evil Queen, Raven Queen’s destiny is to follow in her mother’s wicked footsteps, but evil is so not Raven’s style. She’s starting to wonder, what if she rewrote her own…
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Historical Fiction, Strange Research Methods, and Other Ramblings
I have a mortal horror of getting facts wrong when I’m writing historical fiction. It’s a problem. Because when you’re inserting fictional characters in a real time period with people who actually existed… it’s kind of hard to keep things completely factual. Actually, it’s impossible. Fiction is fiction. History is history. And anything that I write isn’t going to change history. It’s just going to show people what I think about the time period. What my characters would have thought about the time period. What the time period should have been like. (Kidding. Totally kidding here.) Whoa. Feels good to get that off my chest. (Not to mention, I now have an…
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Best Books of 2016
There are exactly 16 books on this list. No more. No less. It was accidental, but I think it worked out rather nicely, for the end of 2016. I read a lot last year. Over 360 books. I know this because I didn’t start Goodreads until March and I had read a lot before that… and I didn’t start plugging my Currently Reading books in until later. So, it was probably closer to 400. Not sure. Let’s move on. Without further ado, my favorite books of 2016. I was introduced to Trixie Belden last year. And it was so good. SO GOOD. I’m almost to the point of fangirling over this series.…
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Book Review: Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White
“SOME PIG,” Charlotte the spider’s praise for Wilbur, is just one fondly remembered snippet from E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. In Some Writer!, the two-time Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet mixes White’s personal letters, photos, and family ephemera with her own exquisite artwork to tell his story, from his birth in 1899 to his death in 1985. Budding young writers will be fascinated and inspired by the journalist, New Yorker contributor, and children’s book author who loved words his whole life. This authorized tribute is the first fully illustrated biography of E. B. White and includes an afterword by Martha White, E. B. White’s granddaughter. (Via Goodreads) Click here to…
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15 Random Literary Facts About Me
I was inspired by Sydney at the Elliot Countenance to post some random facts about myself, so here goes! The first thing I ever remember writing was probably when I was around five or six. It was about a missing blueberry pie, and it was written on several pieces of notebook paper stapled together and charmingly illustrated (not). It was taken from another book which I was infatuated with at the time. For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the book. I know we still have it. It’ll turn up. I also remember making a few similar illustrated books, one in particular about a fairy. I was around…
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Book Review: Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion
Buy here on Amazon. Trixie’s summer is going to be sooo boring with her two older brothers away at camp. But then a millionaire’s daughter moves into the next-door mansion, an old miser hides a fortune in his decrepit house, and a runaway kid starts hiding out in Sleepyside! (Via Goodreads) Mystery. Adventure. Horses. Friends. It wasn’t love at first sight when I began this book, but now I’m a huge fan. Everything in it is fairly wholesome, minus most of the nonsense found in children’s books of today. So far I’ve read books 1-4 and 5-7, and I eventually want to post reviews of all of them. It’s kind of hard to…
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Book Review: The Secret Keepers, by Trenton Lee Stewart
Click here to buy on Amazon. Eleven-year-old Reuben spends his days exploring, hiding, and practicing parkour among the abandoned buildings of the Lower Downs as a way to escape the rough times that have befallen him and his mom–but his discovery of an extraordinary antique pocket watch changes everything. When Reuben finds that the watch has the power to turn him invisible, he’s propelled on the adventure of a lifetime. Now Reuben is being pursued by a group of dangerous men called the Directions, and someone–or something–ominously called The Smoke. They all want the watch, and with the help of new friends, it’s up to Reuben to unravel the mysteries…
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Book Review: Destiny, Rewritten, by Kathryn Fitzmaurice
Click here to buy on Amazon. Synopsis: This sweet contemporary story about poetry, family, and determining your own destiny is perfect for fans of books by Wendy Mass, Joan Bauer, Sharon Creech, and Rebecca Stead. Eleven-year-old Emily Elizabeth Davis has never met her father, so when a book of poetry with his name in it goes missing, Emily and her friends search all over their hometown of Berkeley, California, hoping to track it down. Meanwhile, even though her English-professor mother insists that Emily is destined to become a poet (she named her after Emily Dickinson!), Emily secretly corresponds with her idol, romance writer Danielle Steel. As Publishers Weekly says, “Fitzmaurice’s…
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Thursday Book Haul!
We almost always come home with treasures, usually in the form of books, after visiting our favorite thrift store. (Is that a good thing or a bad thing? The more books the merrier, I guess.) It’s an amazing place where kids books are only 25 cents. Here’s my book haul from Thursday! Cry From the Dungeon, by Betty Swinford. I’m a sucker for vintage books. And this one was from the Moody Bible Institute. Win-win! Alexi’s Secret Mission, by Anita Deyneka. Another vintage book. Strange But True Science, by Editors of Publications International Ltd. This is a cool-looking science book I found for Justus, although I’ll probably end up reading it too…
