Thought for the Day:
“You must have been
warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are
golden only because we let them slip by.”
~James M. Barrie~
Some Gifts for My Writer Friends:
Here are some links I've run across recently that I think you will enjoy. So, enjoy!
This is just fun -- for some wonderful words we should resurrect, click HERE.
Click HERE for an article on Seven Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block. I sure hope some of these will work for me!
There is a good article HERE from Writer’s Digest on Five Ways to
Make Your Novel More Suspenseful.
On my last blog post, I had a drawing for copies of Below and Dead River. The winner of these two books is (Drum Roll Please!) Nancy!! WooHoo. Nancy, I will be getting those books to you this week. Congratulations and enjoy!
I was contacted recently and asked if I would be interested in reviewing Anna Olswanger's new book Greenhorn. Well, I certainly was interested. I know of her work and was thrilled to be asked. I wasn't sure when I would be able to get to it, but when it arrived last week, I found it was very short. I decided to make the time to read it right away.
Greenhorn is the story of boys who attend a boarding yeshiva in New York in 1946. Aaron, who has a bad stuttering problem does not have an easy time in school because of his speech difficulty. 0f course, Aaron has had to learn to live with teasing. A group of boys arrive who have survived the holocaust arrive at the yeshiva. One of these boys, Daniel, is assigned to share the small room Aaron, Ruben, and Bernie already share. Daniel has only one possession, a small box, which he keeps with him at all times. He will show it to no one. He even keeps it in his bed when he sleeps. He hardly ever speaks.
Aaron tries to befriend Daniel and keeps trying even though Daniel does not open up or reciprocate. He keeps to himself and protects his box and his privacy. Some of the boys decide he must be hiding candy from them in his box and knock him down, taking the box and opening it. What they find inside is something that focuses the horror of the holocaust for all to see.
This is a remarkably rich and powerful book. It would be wonderful to use in a classroom as students could read it in its entirety in a couple of class periods. The world of a 1946 yeshiva is well drawn and very real. The story of Daniel, Aaron, and the other boys is one that young
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| Anna Olswanger |
Don’t forget to stop by Shannon
Messenger’s wonderful blog for more Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday links. Click
HERE to find it.
On the book giveaway,
this is for U.S. only. Sorry, but it would be too expensive for me to send
books out of the country. But please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from
you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the title of the
post and it will give you just this post with a comments section on the bottom.
Also, if you haven’t signed up by email, please do. Just look in the upper
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