Dr. Bob Rich Reviews Loving Healing Press Book on Shared Humanity

Title: Demystifying Diversity

Subtitle: Embracing our Shared Humanity
Author: Daralyse Lyons

Genre: Nonfiction: Self-Help, Inspiration
• Publisher : Loving Healing Press

• Language: : English
• Paperback : 178 pages
• ISBN-10 : 1615995331
• ISBN-13 : 978-1615995332

Purchase B&N or Amazon
Kindle $6.29
Paperback $14.34

Reviewed by Dr. Bob Rich 

This review is for two books, not one, because they form one unitary whole. Daralyse has written a powerful book that may change your life, and an accompanying workbook that forces you to convert intellectual understanding into a changed perception of yourself and your world.

If you want one sentence to summarize the book(s), it is “Dehumanizing anyone dehumanizes everyone.” (p 92) My attitude is that we are all family, going right back to the Rift Valley. Demystifying Diversity implicitly applies this concept. Successive chapters examine different sources of discrimination including race, religion, sexual orientation, body size/shape, and disabilities. Each is in effect a case study for applying the message of all the great religions and philosophies: the power of unconditional love. As Daralyse reports her connection to a wide variety of inspiring people, bringing each to life within these pages, she demonstrates that human nature is basically cooperative, compassionate and decent. She invites the reader to identify with this view, and to proactively apply it to everyone.

We learn from doing, not from reading, and so setting exercises is a good teaching device. I enjoyed the exercises in the workbook, and although I was reading because the publisher requested a review, I found myself spending time and mental effort in thinking about the tasks she’d set. Some of the exercises will take you months, such as learning a new language, or a whole lifetime, like becoming friends with people from a culture now foreign to you.

This is a passionate book, a program with the intention of reforming an insane, hating, greedy culture into a sane, loving, generous one. Daralyse is always on the side of the victim — but rightly considers the perpetrator, the abuser, to be also a victim of the abusive behavior: “Trauma is cyclical. Standing for human rights requires us to develop our capacity for empathy and to search out the causes that create conditions of violence and victimization. If we don’t intervene in restorative and reparative ways, hurt people are likely to hurt other people.” (p xii)

Another way I have connected with Daralyse is her distinction between a person and an action. She writes, “Confronting the human capacity for evil doesn’t mean losing sight of the beauty and resilience within each of us. In fact, acknowledging both is the only foundation from which to begin the process of repairing the world.” (p2)

I can’t do better than to finish this review with another quote: “So many of the people I came to know and love since embarking on the Demystifying Diversity initiative are people I would never have crossed paths with otherwise. By connecting over our shared humanity, I have forged lasting friendships and learned a lot about the importance of empathy. Some of the people who have enriched my life the most are people with whom I don’t share much on the surface. Yet, we have connected deeply. They’ve taught me so much and I consider our relationships to be sacred. I could never have figured out the lessons they’ve taught me without them entrusting me with their stories.” (p 140) This is why Daralyse invites you to reap the same benefits through this book.


More About the Author

Daralyse Lyons, aka the Transformational Storyteller, is a journalist, an actor, and an activist. She has written more than two dozen full-length books, a handful of short stories, and countless articles, performed in various plays and in improv comedy shows. A member of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and a summa cum laude graduate of NYU, with a double-major in English and Religious Studies and a minor in History, she is passionate about exposing the painful side of history, the side that is not written by oppressors. Through her studies, she has come to see the beautiful and overlapping philosophies of Judaism, Islam and Christianity and wonders why people so often use religion as a battering ram, instead of a source of solace and support. As a Biracial woman, she has made it her mission to stand for a more integrated world. As a sexually fluid person who has had relationships and experiences with both men and women, she has had to find her place amidst a multitude of communities that attempt to erase her orientation and has been a voice within the darkness. 

After writing an award-winning children’s book (I’m Mixed!) about embracing her multiethnic heritage, Daralyse found her passion and her purpose educating others about the need to embrace all aspects of themselves. Since then, she has written and spoken extensively on the subject of diversity. Her perspective is one that looks to acknowledge the past while refusing to become incapacitated by it. As a Biracial, multiethnic and sexually fluid woman, she is uniquely empowered to use her seemingly disparate background as a catalyst for cross-cultural understanding.

More About the Reviewer

Dr. Bob Rich knows all about prejudice and discrimination, having been a Jewish child in a culture where “You Jews murdered Jesus!” was a customary prelude to physical violence, then “I fought for this country! You foreigners are coming to take it over. Go back to where you came from!” was a sequel. So, like Daralyse, all his life, he has been on the side of the underdog. As he matured, he also developed compassion for the abuser, and now the whole of humanity is his family: he cares for you even if he hates your actions. That’s why he is a Professional Grandfather. If you want to know what that implies, visit his popular blog, Bobbing Around, at https://bobrich18.wordpress.com Learn more about him at http://bobswriting.com. Tweet with him @bobswriting. His newsletter is "Bobbing Around" at https://bobrich18.wordpress.com. His mottos are:
Commit random acts of kindness
Live simply so you may simply live

MORE ABOUT BLOGGER AND A FEW WAYS TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

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Andrew Benson Brown Reviews Poems by "The Sonnet Queen"

 

“The Singing Lines of Theresa Rodriguez: A Review of Sonnets”

by Andrew Benson Brown

 

Title: Sonnets

Author: Theresa Rodriguez

Publisher: Shanti Arts LLC

Publisher Website: www.shantiarts.com

ISBN: 978-1951651350

Released July 2020

$12.95 (print, soft cover, perfect bound)

80 pages

Purchase 

 

Theresa Rodriguez was called "The Sonnet Queen" by one of her other appreciators following a recent public reading she gave. While there are a few other women, and not that many more men, who have written and published sonnets in our time (not exactly a popular genre compared to the fad of 'instapoetry'), she is the only contemporaneous 'female sonneteer' I know of—which is to say, the only woman who has written many sonnets, a la Shakespeare, and published a book exclusively devoted to the craft.

 

In his literary criticism, William Empson showed a subtle attention to what he called “the singing line.” In her new collection of poetry, Sonnets, Rodriguez raises this concern for the musicality of verse to a spiritual level. Take the first stanza of ‘The Sacred Harp:’

 

The music, oh the music starts, and we

Begin to sing in skillful harmony;

Begin to sing in sweet simplicity;

Begin to sing in deep complexity.

 

As both a poet and a trained classical singer, Rodriguez is more consciously aware of the musicality of poetry than most, and it is not surprising that other poems in this collection such as ‘The Piano,’ and ‘Oh, When I Hear,’ also take music as a subject. Most are of course not directly about music, per se, though all display the melodious qualities of regular meter and perfect rhyme. Those that do take music as their surface-level subject are really avenues of exploring larger themes: a panegyric to a Steinway as an expression of ideal beauty, suffering as a path to “where a truth, so sacred, may be found,” and, in ‘The Sacred Harp,’ the worship of God’s mystery.

 

In just these three poems, Rodriguez’s work captures what poetry (and I would add, most great art in general) is meant to do: to capture truth, beauty, and goodness. Poets, those writers who carefully order their words to make of it a musical language and to use metaphors liberally, are those beings most suited to drawing comparisons in the order of creation. Rodriguez seems to implicitly understand this idea that poetry is, perhaps after pure music, the straightest vehicle to God. ‘Sonnet for the Sonnet-Maker,’ is addressed to God Himself, and draws our attention to how the elegance of iambic pentameter dominates so much of the King James Bible:

 

You know the beats and rhythms, the iamb

Which pulses like a crippled-legged walk;

You, with the force of one who said, “I am

That I am,” in iambs you will talk

Of truth and beauty, pain and sorrow, all

And nothing, touching both Heaven and Hell

In what you speak and say…

 

“Cripple-legged walk” is a brilliant detail: a phrase that at once mimetically describes the iambic line, and with it our relationship to God. It finely illustrates Aquinas’s concept of analogical predication, and how words may be understood two different ways as they apply to two different levels of being. God, “I am that I am,” knows the “beats and rhythms” of the iamb, and communicates to us in His “cripple-legged walk” because we, as bipedaled, fallen creatures, must use words to hobble towards He who soars. In ‘Sonnet Sonnet’ Rodriguez repeats this imagery with variation to refer to the three poets with sonnet forms named after them. Being mere mortals (though ones who approach the divine closer than others), the “cripple-rhythmed beauty” of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Spenser is emphasized for their more delimited abilities to exercise “Condensed and distilled thought,” rather than to touch Heaven and Hell or to recall the void.

 

In ‘CCP and Falun Gong Sonnet,’ the first-person narrator awakens on an operating table with one or two less internal organs: “Go, invoke / your party loyalty as I am cut / And mutilated.” From communing with the deities in golden ages of yore, we have degenerated to living in a Kafkaesque world where the muse is an anonymous bureaucrat singing of zoning laws.

 

Rodriguez expresses her own sense of belief in opposition to pernicious modern tendencies in the sonnet, ‘In This Post-Christian Era,’ as well as in a number of other poems in the collection that explore her faith. These tend to come in the latter half of the book; they are preceded by reflections on the art of sonnet-writing and relationships, and precede in turn final poems on the decay of time. One might roughly divide the collection into four sections dominated by these themes (though there are also a few on political and historical subjects interspersed throughout). The move from writing, to love, to God, to the passing of things would seem to be no accident, and this framework offers further proof that Theresa Rodriguez is an artist who speaks to the soul.

 

The straightforwardness of many titles (‘Spenserian Sonnet,’ ‘Petrarchan Sonnet,’ etc.) are mirrored in the candor of Rodriguez’s personal, often self-conscious, reflections on all of the topics mentioned; and the variety of sonnet-styles she mixes (sometimes within a single poem) echo the variety of topics. The pathos of certain poems is balanced by a mimetic wit in others. In ‘Enjambment sonnet,’ the lines begin in terse sentences that give way to longer ones that flow over, preventing isolation between lines. The weight of the line is shifted to the beginning and middle rather than the end, as the addressee is enjoined to

 

Dissent! The point

Is to surprise. Surprise! Then negate

All smoothed-out evenness.

 

The carefully chosen end word “point” gives a sense of periodization before rushing us along to the next line, as the author “negates” the usual expectations of the poetic line. The brief imperative, “Think!” is sandwiched at the midpoint of the line before the final couplet. “And then think more,” we are told. Theresa here shows us that the art of poetry, while inventive, is more than mere spontaneity. In the equally clever ‘Five Minute Sonnet,’ the narrator opens the first stanza relating doubts as to whether such a thing can be done, increases in confidence during the second stanza, and describes the flow of how, “The lines just come so quickly to my mind,” in the third, until hitting writer’s block in the final couplet. Artlessness in art is not really a thing, aside from occasional brief spurts as the one that resulted in Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan,’ following waking from an opium dream. Lacking drugs for stimulation, most examples of effortlessness are only apparent—the Muse only descends upon one after long reflection. Examples of pure spontaneity that contemporary free-verse poets often brag about are simply the results of museless minds.

 

In poems like ‘Annelid Sonnet,’ ‘Cut Sonnet,’ and ‘Homeless Sonnet,’ each titular analogy is at once partly autobiographical, a description of her subject matter on love or pain, and a metaphor for the artistic process. In ‘Sonnet of the Hardened Heart,’ she employs crustaceous imagery to create an analogy with the relation between flesh and spirit:

 

Care less, I warn myself; bother no more

With inner crevices: prying the shell

Like scabs (rough, oozing, sore), which crust, but tell

Of tumults against the psychic seabed floor;

It is in vain.

 

She goes on to pile images on top of one another to convey a sense of being “entombed” within her existence: “the meat” is like “newborn skin” and “the vaginal flower.” The effect on display here is an example of William Empson’s second of the seven types of ambiguity he describes in his book of that name: when two or more meanings are resolved into one for purposes of building psychological complexity.

 

Rodriguez often undertakes to explore her conceptual themes through a repetition of abstract words. Most of these occur in poems about the self-reflexivity of writing, and occasionally in poems about capturing the divine. In ‘Earl of Oxenford’s Sonnet’ she defines a term with itself (“For truth is truth, and you do shake a spear…”) to justify the narrator’s euphoria in discovering the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship. In ‘Form Sonnet’ there is the nested identification-turned-negation of

 

….the freedom that free form can miss.

 

For freedom in most freedom is remiss

In finding beauty in this poetry.

 

Rodriguez here highlights the contradictory nature of free verse: that through its own lack of discipline it loses the quality it seeks to define itself through. Referring then to her own penchant for poetic structure she writes, “In building such some scoffers might dismiss: / But such is perfect perfection to me.” Here the placement of “perfection” upsets the hitherto perfect meter of the stanza, creating an ironic effect.

 

This placing of the same abstract term adjacently to itself as a different part of speech occurs in several other poems in the collection. In ‘The Simple, Stalwart Faith,’ she asks, “Where is the light / that lit this darkened darkness?” She could have used ‘deepened,’ to modify “darkness” or some other synonym of ‘intensified’ to make her point, yet she chose to use the same word to emphasize the depth and doubling of a metaphysical condition once was “lit” by “light.” In the next line, “Now I strive to say regurgitated prayers,” she further emphasizes the sense of monotony to the rituals that underlie her doubts. Some might see the use of abstractions in this way as a weakness that undermines the purpose of poetry, whose strength lies in the use of sensual imagery; Rodriguez, though, seems to use them to careful effect in most places in a way that reflects her themes.

 

The William Empson quote about “the singing line” cited at the beginning of this essay is better applied to Rodriguez than even Empson himself—a modernist poet whose verse reflects his admiration for scientism by employing objective diction, and as such can sometimes falls rather flat. Rodriguez writes in a straightforward and clear style, and while her poems operate on different levels, there is little that’s overtly contradictory in a head-scratching way. With a few possible exceptions, the reader seldom stops to invent interpretations or tease apart multiple meanings that must be held in the mind at once. These are poems that can be appreciated by the average literate person, as well as the more sophisticated enthusiast.

 

Theresa’s website is www.bardsinger.com.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

 

Andrew Benson Brown is a poet who lives in rural Missouri. In exile from urbane delights and perversions, he spends his days tending to the needs of the downtrodden. At night he enters the ancient courts of ancient men, via the Internet Archive. He is currently in the early stages of writing a mock epic poem about the American Revolution.

 

MORE ABOUT BLOGGER AND WAYS TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request the social sharing image by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too!

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A Real Grandpa Tells Stories in a Real Grandpa's Voice

Title: Alex Asks Grandpa About the Olden Days

Subtitle: A 1940s Story

By Gary L. Wilhelm

Illustrator: Pieter Els

Publisher: Wise Owl Factory

Available at Amazon

ISBN: 9781729375280 (2020)

Genre: Children’s Picture Book

 

 

                        Author Speaking in a Real Grandpa’s Voice

 

 

Grandpa Shares His Childhood Memories

 

 

 

Gary L. Wilhelm is doing his Grandpa Thing for his grandson Alex, exactly as a grandpa would. He talks about commonplace things and events from his childhood like furnaces in the basement that must be fed coal to operate and his scary moment with a bull. Commonplace when he was a child, but not so common for today’s children with so many families headed for cities and suburbs and in this fast-moving computer age like telephones without dials—or pushbuttons!

 

And he does in his real grandpa voice. It’s as natural as if a real grandchild were sitting on his knee, but every reader benefits from the closeness of his point of view. Alex Asks Grandpa About the Olden Days achieves something close, something rare and it does it easily, conversationally,  and with love. 

 

 

 

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG 

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Authors, readers, publishers, and reviewers may republish their favorite reviews of books they want to share with others. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read and love. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page and in a tab at the top of this blog's home page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites so it may be used a resource for most anyone in the publishing industry. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. #TheFrugalbookPromoter, #CarolynHowardJohnson, #TheNewBookReview, #TheFrugalEditor, #SharingwithWriters, #reading #BookReviews #GreatBkReviews #BookMarketing

The Queen of Sonnets Reviews James Sale's Poetry "HellWard"

A Review of HellWard by Theresa Rodriguez

Title: HellWard: The English Cantos Volume One

Author: James Sale

Genre: Poetry

146 pages

Independently Published

ISBN: 979-8654151919

Released June 2020

$10.02 (Paperback)

Purchase on Amazon

Reviewed by Theresa Rodriguez

I had the pleasure of listening to James Sale read each of his twelve Cantos of HellWard through his Wider Circle YouTube videos, which was a riveting experience. Then I had perhaps the even more riveting experience of reading the book, which I did in one day. The language is so compelling and the story so interesting that I could not put it down! 

HellWard is a journey of the mind and spirit whereby the author, in a series of visions, is guided by no less than the great Dante himself through various wards of hell. Within these wards he encounters an array of people from his past, as well as world leaders, philosophers, and poets.

In HellWard we find powerful, often disturbing language, at the same time raw and refined, beautiful and at times jolting in its honesty. What struck me particularly throughout the book is the way Sale uses mono-syllabic words to powerful effect: death, hell, pain, depth, weak, guts, ache, dark, gunk, blight, flesh, tears, stench, dread, blood, hiss, oozed,“clots of gore” (a wonderful image), cries, groans, filth, swill, “smelt the blood” (another wonderful image), skull, skin, bone, ice, heat, hot, bare, raw, mess, froth, “dark webs,” “hard  knots”, guilt, “black holes,” blotch, stank, bleak, slop, “greed and pride and lust,” and “sick slime.” Each of these words are like little pinpricks, jabbing the sensibilities over and over again as one reads through the text.

I was deeply affected by many passages in HellWard. These few examples impressed me particularly: 

In Canto Two, James is seeing his mother in hell:

“My hair electrified, raised up in shock;

My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth;

I could not speak, seemed my whole being locked,”

And in this poignant passage we read about his dysfunctional relationship with her:

“How I longed, despite it all, just to feel

She loved me, and that deeply she approved;

My whole life waiting, and hoping she will

At last say words that mean, truly, I am loved.”

In Canto 3 we have a vivid and disturbing scene of a former friend's sperm-bank babies:

“'Hi James,' he said, emotionless and waste.

'I'd knew you'd find me; knew you'd like my work.'

What work? I thought, Then heard some sullen sobs:

The walls themselves had faces in, each hurt--

Each face half-formed, deformed, and like a yob's

Made so through lack of love and fatherhood,

But each one spoke, as one collection, mob;

Each one deprived of anything called good

So each one cried and tried to finger-point,”

There is a fine alliterative passage in Canto 5:

“And Marlene's hair, once red, now growing shoots

Of flecked and flecking grey, like fine, foamed froth,”

And a beautiful passage on prayer in Canto 6:

“And I at last in the wide interval

Unfroze and found myself creating prayer.”

Dante's advice to James in Canto 7 is skillfully rendered:

“What's solid materialises here;

In mortal life cause and effect may not

Always manifest as a conjoined pair;

Delay may be profound, prolonged, such that

The superficial mock, see that as proof

No order is, or word established fiat;”

As well as is this passage:

“Where is my guide? Was that someone I dreamed?

How lonely being lonely felt.”

In Canto 9, we find another striking image:

“...we drowned

In his rich sop of words that, as I say,

Echoed in double froth, doubled rebound,”

The book is full of intensity and movement, and there is much more ready to to read and savor.

One technical aspect of Sale's writing that intrigued me is is use of imperfect rhyme. As he says in the interview which follows the Cantos: “Of course, the key is not to set oneself the misguided task of insisting on perfect rhymes, since our language is not as rich in them as Italian.” Hence we have such combinations as “breaker,” “beaker,” and “features”; “other,” “further,” and “together”; and “fish,” “crush,” and “flesh.” I have been fairly rigid in my own rhyming philosophy but reading Sale's work has inspired me to play around with a little more flexibility in my rhyming in the future.

This collection of twelve Cantos is the pinnacle of achievement by a master poet. Sale has managed to interweave a vibrant personal narrative with current topics of interest such as mass murder, Brexit, and modern poets and philosophers. It is a rich and intense reading experience. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in Dante, classical poetry, or social commentary.

James Sale’s website is https://jamessalepoetry.webs.com

More About the Reviewer

Theresa Rodriguez is the author of three books of poetry: Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs (Bardsinger Books, 2015), Longer Thoughts (Shanti Arts, 2020), and Sonnets, a collection of sixty-five sonnets (Shanti Arts, 2020). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Spindrift,Mezzo Cammin, The Wombwell Rainbow, Serotonin, The Road Not Taken, and the Society of Classical Poets Journal. Her website is http://www.bardsinger.com, where you can view videos of her performance poetry and find information about her books. Follow Theresa on Instagram and Twitter @thesonnetqueen.

MORE ABOUT BLOGGER AND WAYS TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request s social sharing images like the one in this post by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too!

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Fourth in Wanda Luthman's Franky Series Picture Books for Children

Title: Franky The Fearless Flamingo

Series: Franky the Flamingo, 4^th in Series 

By Wanda Luthman

Illustrator: Mara Reitsma

Available Paper and Ebook at Amazon

ISBN: 9781734009934 (2020)

Genre: Environment / Children’s Picture Book

 

 

 

                        Doing Good! Just Because

 

Frankie Does It Again with Lessons for the Planet
And for Living Better Lives

 

 

How lovely to have a children’s author who is also has a counseling background. Though I think of this Franky book (and Wand Luthman’s others) as little lessons in saving the planet, this one is the story of a crab who decides not to live up to his name learns about compassion from Franky to whom he owes gratitude but ends up being anything but mean and crabby. 

 

Young children will love the rhyme, the relatable expressions of the animals he or she meets, but my hope is that they will remember the lines: 

“Herman (the Crab) had learned to use his strength for good

To help someone in need just because he could.”

 

It seems this Franky story also shines as an anti-bullying story. 

 

I have given my grandsons a copy of all of Luthman’s books for the empathetic stories, for environmental lessons, but also for the beautiful illustrations by Mara Reitsma, who, as it happens, almost always includes one of my favorite animals—a turtle—in her Florida-influenced artwork. It’s the Ocean! It’s the Color. It’s the variety of animals! 

 

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 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

 Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. #TheFrugalbookPromoter, #CarolynHowardJohnson, #TheNewBookReview, #TheFrugalEditor, #SharingwithWriters, #reading #BookReviews #GreatBkReviews #BookMarketing