Speaking is a part of the writing life. Initially I thought I would speak to larger and larger audiences as I became better and better known. Two events this past weekend show how wrong I was! On Friday, October 31, I joined forces with illustrator Will Hillenbrand and Richmond Symphony Orchestra flutist Evelien Woolard to… [Read More]
Best Friends Pretend! by Linda Leopold Strauss Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
April 22, 2014 By
Best Friends Pretend! by Linda Leopold Strauss; illustrated by Lynn Munsinger; Scholastic/Cartwheel Books, 2014. 14 pages; $6.99 (board book); reading level: ages 3-6. The two “princesses” dressed up in sparkly pinks and purples on the cover are a sure-fire draw for very young girls. But don’t be fooled into thinking they can’t pretend outside the… [Read More]
Monitor by James Tertius deKay Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
April 7, 2014 By
Monitor; The Story of the Legendary Civil War Ironclad and the Man Whose Invention Changed the Course of History by James Tertius deKay. Ballantine Books, 1997. 247 pages; $11.95 (paperback). Reading level: high school/adult. Building on the premise that it was not the more famous land battles that determined the outcome of the Civil War… [Read More]
Ladies and Not-So Gentle Women by Alfred Allan Lewis Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
April 2, 2014 By
Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women;Elisabeth Marbury,Anne Morgan, Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Vanderbilt, and Their Times by Alfred Allan Lewis. Penguin, 2000. 540 pages; $18.00 (paperback). Reading level: adult. Four big-spending Gilded Age women would seem to have nothing to contribute to the rough and tumble politics of women’s rights near the turn of the 20th century. … [Read More]
Duck, Duck, Moose! Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
March 10, 2014 By
Duck, Duck, Moose! by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen; illustrated by Noah Z. Jones; Disney/Hyperion, 2014. 32 pages; $16.99 (hardcover); reading level: ages 2-5. The text on each page of this story about three friends – two ducks and a moose – couldn’t be more spare: You guessed it – “Duck, Duck, Moose.” The illustrations tell the tale… [Read More]
Canada Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
February 18, 2014 By
Canada by Richard Ford. Ecco/HarperCollins, 2012. 420 pages; $15.99 (paperback). Reading level: adult. When sixty-six-year-old Dell Parsons looks back on the six weeks that changed his life back when he was fifteen, he begins his story this way: “First I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” It… [Read More]
Connie’s Winter Reading List. What Are You Reading?
February 11, 2014 By
Our snowy winter here in Indiana is slowing me down and providing an opportunity to make a dent in the pile of titles stacked on my nightstand. Canada by Richard Ford. Besides the author’s credentials (he won a Pulitzer for his novel Independence Day), the first sentence has me hooked: “First, I’ll tell about the… [Read More]
Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Reviewed by Connie Wooldridge
February 3, 2014 By
Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. Random House, 2012. 256 pages; $27.00 (hardback). Reading level: adult. In 1991, when a band of laborers was trucked in from Tamil Nadu to repair a runway at the Mumbai Airport, they decided to stay. They draped empty cement sacks… [Read More]
Suite Française Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
May 21, 2013 By
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky; translated from the French by Sandra Smith. Vintage Books, 2007. 403 pages; $15.00 (paperback); reading level: adult. Némirovsky’s novel is accompanied by some fifty pages of notes. If you read only the novel itself, you will take up a panoramic, camera’s-eye view of Paris in June of 1940. You will… [Read More]
Marmee & Louisa; The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
April 29, 2013 By
Marmee & Louisa; The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante; Free Press, 2012. 368 pages; $26.00 (hardcover). This book is a game-changer. As LaPlante points out, “the packaging of Louisa…along with the idea that her mother was irrelevant” began immediately after her death. The world was told that Louisa… [Read More]