WARNING:
CAUTIONARY REVIEW WITH PHOTOS DEPICTING ADULT CONTENT.
Author: Diane Pendergraft
Paint the Wind
While checking my county library catalog for Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Echo, the description of Paint the Wind caught my eye because the story takes place in Wyoming. I’m always a little skeptical about stories supposed to take place in Wyoming, but I remembered, from years ago, that Ryan’s Esperanza Rising was surprisingly good. Echo, which…
Grace Banker and Her Hello Girls Answer the Call: The Heroic Story of WWI Telephone Operators
Several years ago I spent quite a bit of time studying the early 1900s through WWI. I read nonfiction and fiction about and from that era. So I was fascinated when I discovered Switchboard Soldiers: A Novel by Jennifer Chiaverini. How had I never heard even a hint about these women who were the first…
Books by Horseback: A Librarian’s Brave Journey to Deliver Books to Children
“Edith is a packhorse librarian. Every day she travels for miles to deliver books. William lives far back in the mountains. Edith will have to ride hard to reach his family’s cabin.” There is a storm coming, but that doesn’t stop Edith. Or her horse. And this is what keeps her going. As summarized in…
One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II
“We have only one pair of boots and must take turns. I work at night, and my husband works during the day. We spend the rest of the time in bed for warmth.”
From the Good Mountain: How Gutenberg Changed the World
James Rumford’s story opens with a riddle. Each element of the riddle is explained in imagination-sparking prose with glowing illustrations. The rags became paper stiffened with glue made from bones. The brown coat was leather, printing types were molded from the lead and tin, and the oak was used to build the printing press. The…
The Christmas Rocket
Dino is almost ten years old. Many years of working in the family pottery shop have shriveled his grandfather like an old pea with a knitted cap upon his bald head, and made his Papa’s back stooped. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and Dino must go down to the village with his Papa to sell their…
A Long Road on a Short Day
“Early on a white January morning, Samuel’s mother said, ‘I do wish we had a brown-eyed cow to give us milk for the baby.’” So Papa sets out to get Mama a cow, and Samuel goes with him. “‘Keep up,’ said Samuel’s father. He looked up at the gray clouds. ‘It’s a long road on…
Why Libraries?
This article was originally written in three parts and published in The Wyoming News Chronicle in the spring of 2023. Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland in 1835, emigrated with his parents to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was twelve years old. His life is an almost unbelievable rags-to-riches story. He went from working as a bobbin…
Orbiting Jupiter
In nearly every review Sara and I have written for Gary D. Schmidt’s books, we have used the word hard to describe the situations his characters encounter. Orbiting Jupiter takes hard to a new level. In this interview with Schmidt after Okay for Now was published, he talks about an experience at a book club…
The Big Jump
In Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay for Now, Doug finds himself babysitting the local police officer’s five children. Before they go to bed, he has to read a book to each of them. Since Doug has only just learned to read, though he is in the eighth grade, the children’s books most of us recognize aren’t…
Anson’s Way
Anson’s Way, published in 1999, is Gary D. Schmidt’s fourth book, but only his second fiction novel. The Sin Eater was his first. When the story opens, Anson Staplyton, drummer boy, is aboard ship on his way to Ireland from England where he will take his place as the seventh Staplyton to keep the king’s…
The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles
He loves his job because getting the letters so often makes people happy, but his wish is that someday a letter will be for him. This is unlikely because he has no friends. His loneliness is exemplified by the bleakness of the illustrations through about half the book.
Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry
I remember singing some version of “The Ballad of John Henry” when I was in grade school, but I don’t remember anyone explaining what it meant. Since we learned it along with silly songs like “Froggy Went a-Courtin’” and “Señor Don Gato,” it didn’t occur to me to wonder if John Henry had been a…
The Sin Eater
“Time was like a fishing line that gets all caught in the reel, looping back into itself and tangling into knots that are forever. And the days’ stories were all knitted in tangles, so that I could hardly remember one day from another.” No one who has read Gary D. Schmidt’s novels or our previous…