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]
Ladies and Not-So Gentle Women by Alfred Allan Lewis Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
April 2, 2014 By
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]
Etched in Clay Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
April 22, 2013 By
Etched in Clay; The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet by Andrea Cheng; illustrated with woodcuts by the author; Lee & Low, 2013. 143 pages; $17.95 (hardcover); reading level: ages 10 and up. Born into slavery in 1801, Dave should have lived an invisible life and died unknown. That he didn’t is due to an almost… [Read More]
Revolutionary Friends – Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
February 4, 2013 By
Revolutionary Friends; General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette by Selene Castrovilla; illustrated by Drazen Kozjan; Calkins Creek, 2013. 40 pages; $16.95 (hardcover); reading level: ages 7-12. The story of the reserved George Washington’s initially reluctant friendship with the young French officer whose heart “enlisted” in the American struggle for independence from Britain, is… [Read More]
The Year of the Book – Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
December 22, 2012 By
The Year of the Book by Andrea Cheng; illustrated by Abigail Halpin; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. 148 pages; $15.99 (hardcover); reading level: ages 7-11. Anna Wang is just beginning fourth grade and the word of the week is “perseverance.” “It’s when you don’t give up,” her best friend, Laura, tells the class. Both girls will… [Read More]