What can I say? The thrills and mysteriousness in The World of All Things Lost will prompt readers young and older to turn its pages. Pirates, thieves, time travel, friendship, love, and more, draw together to make first-time author John Parnham’s novel an adventure that grabs youngsters ready for chapter books and stings their imaginations. … Continue reading I Wondered Where It Went
Think – a cross between James Patterson’s Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of Wimpy Kid series and Sarina Dories, well-sketched, fast-paced series, Womby’s School for Wayward Witches. Enjoy any or all of those and you will get a big kick out of Tennessee author Jerry Harwood’s Freckles: The Dark … Continue reading A Hero Who Did Not Know It
Brudders Learns The Joy of Saying Thank You by K.A. Leigh My rating: 5 of 5 stars In the launch of the Brudders read-aloud series, K.A. Leigh and husband Derek Roberts, have developed a main character, a whimsical world and visual style that children and adults will find seductive. I received an Advance Reader Copy … Continue reading Manners Touch The Heart
The title teases the imagination. There is just something about the tight, double-trio of verbiage that makes a first-time viewer say, “Nah! It can’t be.” That is why readers and word-lovers are likely to find amazement and satisfaction when they open this or any of the previous volumes of Doug Weller’s Six Word Stories. I … Continue reading Words Work Wonders
In a volume of presentations at the 2012 International Colloquium of American Studies, on poetry in the United States, Marcel Arbeit, noted student on southern culture, writes, “Poems as Part of Everyday Life According to Fred Chappell.” On point, Arbeit writes that the North Carolina laureate Fred Chappell’s thought that “bad poetry,…has too much pathos, … Continue reading The Key to Life is to Be-long
Two regrets: 1. The book did not come to my attention when published in 2014 and 2018, but I am glad Al E. Boy shared the 2021 edition. I am more sorry that the Canada-born, English teacher, currently in Seoul, South Korea, did not send his latter works – The Adventures of Fawn (2020), or The Adventures of … Continue reading Home Is Where You Start
In this bid to reshape fantasy archetypes Marvel comic author Greg Pak teams with a talented illustrator Takeshi Miyazawa, who also works for that company, to deliver The Princess Who Saved Herself. The picture book in comic format recasts the image of the ancient concept of royal maiden. Even to say that is like casting … Continue reading Rockin’ Princess Breaks Mold
The book highlights questions that confounds many adults in the United States these days, and offers answers that make the deadly plague and safety practices understandable, even to a preschooler. The toy poodle star of the debut picture book co-authored by A. Chakravorty and M. Stainwell, and Illustrated by Claudia Fasser, puts scientifically accurate information into … Continue reading Puzzle Solver as Poodle
It’s funny – Juntu Ahjee’s, The Return of Sister Harris, is a page-turner defeated only by elements dear to most readers. In many places the narrative’s pace is too slow or there is not enough to paint clear pictures, but the spare prose aside, the Seattle-based, award-winning, horror fiction writer and poet, is a keen storyteller. The … Continue reading Patience Is Required For Peace
Engle tends to make a common literary trope into a page-turner, because she is not afraid of the weird. The fish-out-of water scenario and deft prose in her 2013 debut work, Clifton Chase and the Arrow of Light, brought to mind Mark Twain’s 1889 classic, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Part of that is the author’s … Continue reading Love As a Trick in the Head
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