“Because her name is easy to mistake with that of a certain blonde amateur sleuth in a little blue roadster, Nancy Rue often finds more name recognition than she expects. This is somehow fitting, because it was partly her childhood admiration for Nancy Drew – in the...
Kate DiCamillo’s consistently wins the highest awards in the nation for her stories. Because of Winn-Dixie is no exception. Synopsis Winn-Dixie is a dog, so named under unusual circumstances, and he really doesn’t do much in this tale except act like an average dog,...
Both Sarah Soon and Janet Joanou Weiner are writer friends of mine. Janet's first book came out this year---historical fiction set in France during the reign of Louis XIV. Though Darkness Descend focuses on the persecution of the French Hugenots, a fascinating and...
When Antony John’s wife challenged him to write a book about rock music and its personalities from a deaf person’s point of view, Five Flavors of Dumb was the result. Synopsis Eighteen-year-old Piper Vaughn lost her hearing in fifth grade. Her speech is pretty clear,...
I've been wanting to be more faithful in writing book reviews, but...life happens. We'll see if I can meet my monthly goals in 2022--one blog post, one book review, one Do Not Delete post, and maybe a video clip of sign language. That last one takes even more time...
My neighbor makes a habit of discovering special devotional books to study during the Lenten and Advent seasons on the Church calendar. This year, I’ll be giving her a fresh-off-the-press little gem, The Scandal of Christmas, by Dr. William B. Coker, Sr. Four chapters...
After a series of bad choices rocked his world, seventeen-year-old Preston charts a new course as far from his ladies’ man ways as he can get. He distances himself from the dating scene and avoids his party-loving friends—the things that once dominated his life. Then...
Cynthia Toney was one of the first of my writer friends to be published. Her historical novel for tweens and teens is a favorite read. Synopsis In a southern U.S. farming community in 1925, thirteen-year-old Salvatore and his Italian immigrant father become involved...
After 2020, do you need to enjoy something silly and carefree? Children's books, especially many written early in the last century provide puzzles to solve with an air of optimism and escapades filled with humor. Mr. Popper's Penguins is one of them. Growing up, I had...
There’s a difference between deaf and Deaf. The former is a physical condition, the latter is an identity. Having grown up with a deaf sibling, I’d always been aware of the frustrations in communication between the hearing and the deaf, but until recent years I had...
I’m always good for a compassionate tear-jerker of a story, and Lety Out Loud with its sympathetic characters and focus on abandoned pets blessed me with three separate crying jags. Synopsis Lety Muñoz is an ESL student fresh out of fifth grade. She loves putting just...
Painting the Rainbow is a beautiful, multi-generational story of the Greenwood family’s summer reunion. The Greenwoods appear healthy, supportive of one another, ideal—except for the mystery of Jesse’s death more than twenty years earlier. Thirteen-year-old...
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