Middle Grade Favorites
At the Bath Book Bash in Bath, Maine, I met some author friends and added a few children’s books to my collection – no surprise. In author Anna Jordon’s debut middle grade historical novel, SHIRA & ESTHER’S DOUBLE DREAM DEBUT, Shira and Esther don’t know each other. But they soon will, thanks to Benny, the hotel bell hop who discovers that Esther has a twin living in the same town. Formatted as a stage play with an overture (introduction), three acts (chapters), and a curtain call (glossary of Yiddish words), the book invites the reader into the different worlds … Read more
LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN
LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN – a Book Review This book review comes an admission – Author Toni Buzzeo is a personal friend! She is a New York Times best-selling children’s author who has published twenty-nine picture books, including the 2013 Caldecott Honor ONE COOL FRIEND, illustrated by David Small. I am delighted to recommend Toni’s first Middle Grade novel, LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN, published this summer by Holiday House. Cora Mae Tipton yearns for electricity to come to her Kentucky mountain in 1937. Convinced of its benefits, she and her best friend set out to educate their classmates … Read more
Reader Review by Becky Goodwin
What a simply beautiful book. The ongoing themes of fear over loss, fear of sexuality, fear of pain and that God will ask too much of her (Hildegard) made her character feel human, approachable and profoundly accessible, even though the details of her life are so foreign to today’s audience. The details of the time period – the specific mention of everything from the furniture in the monastery to the herbs used in the infirmary made the 12th century come alive and created texture to the story – the space itself became real for me. I couldn’t put it down!
Catholic Fiction.net Review
Reviewer Mary Woods says… “One of the remarkable things about the book is Joyce Ray’s skill in portraying Hildegard as a character with whom the reader can sympathize.” “As a young adult novel, it does an excellent job of turning a character who would at first seem foreign into a person whom the young reader can care about. Under Joyce Ray’s pen, the monastic life becomes a drama of love between God the Creator and his created. Feathers and Trumpets is a worthy tribute to this unique and wonderful saint.”
Reader Review by Carol Armstrong, Pennsylvania
With profound sensitivity, the author of Feathers and Trumpets breathes beauty and contemporary relevance into the life of the 12th century historical personage Hildegard of Bingen. A religious visionary, Hildegard is well-known today among students of sacred medieval music for her ethereal Gregorian chants, and among scientists for her learned treatises on natural history and the medicinal uses of plants, trees and animals to cure human disease. But it is her deep faith and her strength of character that inspires author Joyce Ray and which she unfolds to us in this book. With language and images that are poetic and … Read more