A while back, I traveled to the Blue Marble Bookstore in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, for the book launch of Like a River by Kathy Cannon Wiechman. Book launches are exciting affairs. Of course, they’re really exciting if it’s your own book that’s being launched. But the journey from idea to publication is such a long… [Read More]
Best Children’s Book Ever!
April 27, 2015 By
According to dozens of critics from around the world, Charlotte’s Web is the best book ever published for children aged 10 and under. If I had been asked to come up with the best children’s book ever, dozens of titles would have come to mind: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble for one (a darling of anti-establishment… [Read More]
Leave the Door Open! – 40 Percent of 6-11 Year Olds Wish Their Parents Hadn’t Stopped Reading to Them
April 13, 2015 By
My husband and I have four children – all now adults. Reading to them was always a treat for me and watching each of them in turn grow “too old to be read to” was an agony. When my younger two boys, who shared a room and slept in twin beds side by side, were… [Read More]
Like a River; A Civil War Novel by Kathy Cannon Wiechman Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
March 31, 2015 By
Like a River; A Civil War Novel by Kathy Cannon Wiechman; Calkins Creek, 2015. 336 pages; $17.95 (hardcover); reading level: ages 10 and up. The stage is deftly set in the first two pages of this remarkable novel: we are in Ohio, the Civil War is raging, and fifteen-year-old, Leander Jordan (“Jordan like the river”)… [Read More]
Moaning and Groaning
March 12, 2015 By
I’ve done more moaning and groaning than writing since last November. Just after Thanksgiving of 2014, my husband and I moved out of our Richmond, Indiana house (where we’d lived for twenty-three years) to a new much smaller home in Indianapolis. The boxes and the upheaval and the not-knowing-where-anything-is pushed my writing time off the… [Read More]
The Writing Mind of Edith Wharton
February 18, 2015 By
The Atlantic magazine neatly bookended Edith Wharton’s writing life. It was in the pages of that prestigious journal that, in 1880, her first poems appeared in print. In 1933, four years before her death, that same journal published an article entitled “Confession of a Novelist” in which Wharton looked back over her prolific writing career… [Read More]
Politics and Picture Books: A Proposed Lesson for High School Students
January 28, 2015 By
If I told you the U. S. Defense Department’s procurement process would be a great subject for a picture book, you might not take me too seriously. The topic sounds complicated and boring and nonfiction writers tend to look for the exotic, the unheard of, the crazy, the bizarre. A good story idea can also… [Read More]
On Your Mark, Get Set, READ! – First Annual National Readathon Day on January 24th!
January 21, 2015 By
On Saturday, January 24, from noon to 4 p.m. is the first annual National Readathon Day, a marathon to encourage reading across the nation and promote literacy. The National Book Foundation, Penguin Random House, Goodreads, and Mashable are partnering on the event, which will benefit the Foundation’s education programs. Just think, to participate you have… [Read More]
Bookends – Some Suggested Christmas Reading
December 1, 2014 By
I like “bookend” plots that start in one place and then circle back to the beginning of things. I like January and December because they bookend the year. And I like bookends – the real thing – because they’re useful when you have as many books as I do. Here are some books you might… [Read More]
The Big and the Small of it
November 24, 2014 By
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]