Frey and Rafi are inseparable . . . but very few people have ever seen them together. This is because Frey is Rafi’s double, raised in the shadows of their rich father’s fortress. While Rafi has been taught to charm, Frey has been taught to kill. Frey only exists to protect her sister. There is... Continue Reading →
The Queen Girls are Back!
Last year I had the pleasure of being included in helping launch the Kickstarter campaign for Queen Girls Publications to present Bessie: Queen of the Sky and had a great interview with the team behind the books. So I am thrilled to announce that today they have launched their new Kickstarter campaign to promote their... Continue Reading →
The Lunar Chronicles
Imagine a futuristic world where there is life on the moon and where cyborg and android life are reality. In the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, that is the world that we enter. Once you've got that part understood, add in characters loosely related to well known fairy tale characters. Put it all together and... Continue Reading →
Role Playing Game Comes to Life
*Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for a DRC of this book which comes out on July 17th. All opinions are my own. Imagine that you and a group of friends get hooked on a fantasy role playing game. But as you enter 6th grade, the group starts to splinter a bit as everyone... Continue Reading →
Etiquette & Espionage
The year is 1851 and women are expected to be perfect hostesses, focus on fashion, complete with full petticoats, and always behave as a proper lady. Fourteen year old Sophronia is much more interested in climbing trees and figuring out how machines work than behaving as she is supposed to. It has gotten to the... Continue Reading →
Folktales with Lessons for Life
Folktales are such a wonderful part of children's literature. There are so many tales that have been passed down through the generations and we have learned so many valuable lessons from them. One of the things that I find especially fascinating is reading folktales from a wide variety of cultures to see how similar situations... Continue Reading →
Dear Dragon
We have recently started encouraging our daughters to get into the "old fashioned" concept of writing letters to pen-pals. J has started writing to a cousin and some of E's closest friends will be moving away this summer. With that in mind, finding Josh Funk's new book, dear Dragon, has been an absolute delight. The... Continue Reading →
The Power of The Storyteller
"There is a unique kind of magic that comes from hearing a story told. With only the power of a voice, an entire world can be created. Suddenly, the audience becomes the hero, the villain, or the magic djinn commanding the desert sand storm." So says Evan Turk in the author's note to his book... Continue Reading →
Traveling the World through Fables
"Long ago, everything from the changing of the seasons to the passage of the Sun through the sky was an unsolved mystery. So people came up with stories to explain how things came to be. These stories - known as myths or fables - varied from place to place, but all had a shared thread... Continue Reading →