Hop On Over to Read "The Frog in the Well"

The Frog in the Well
(Hardcover)
By Irene Y. Tsai (Author), Pattie Caprio (Illustrator)
Published by www.cebilingualbooks.com
Genre: children's book
ISBN: 978-0980130515
List Price: $14.95
Originally published on CE Bilingual Books website and other marketing
materials.


Reviewed by Tom Watkins

The Frog in the Well is both beautifully written and illustrated. The
story of how the frog views his world will jump off the pages for
children while educating them about Chinese culture and language. I
have had an interest in China ever since a 4th-grade teacher opened my
eyes to the country and its people, culture, language, and history.

The Frog in the Well will create a spark for learning about China and
the most spoken language in the world: Mandarin Chinese. Parents,
teachers, and educational leaders should be encouraged to help
children discover China, and The Frog in the Well is a great tool for
doing so. This will help prepare our children for the transformational
world that they are entering and make America a magnet for Chinese
investment in the future. Don't just sit there—hop on over and pick up
a copy of The Frog in the Well."

Reviewer: Tom Watkins
Michigan State Superintendent of Schools (2001–2005), MI
Honorary Professor, Mianyang University


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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, founder of Authors' Coalition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com). It 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 and reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've loved. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page.

Love Food and Mysteries? Do the Silver Sisters Have Something for You!

TITLE: A Corpse in the Soup

AUTHOR: Morgan St. James and Phyllice Bradner

WEBSITE: www.silversistersmysteries.com

GENRE: Funny Mystery series

ISBN# Paperback: 1-59705-805-X Audio CD: 1-59607-857-X

Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson, Reader Views, www.readerviews.com

Fast-paced and laugh-out-loud funny, this was a quick and satisfying read. Morgan St. James and Phyllice Bradner are sisters in real life, so that might explain why their co-operation worked out so well in a book. I certainly hope this was not the last book they’ve written together. Silver Sisters rule! I would highly recommend A Corpse in the Soup to any mystery lover, particularly those who enjoy the Cooking Channel and love a good, funny read.

Take several chefs, add some classy – and less classy - ladies, a couple of well-aged vaudeville actors, a talking dog, a bunch of gofers and miscellaneous Hollywood characters, and add a heaping cup of jealousy, a pinch of intrigue, a smidgen of history. Garnish with incredibly funny names (Sterling Silver, Biff Wellington, Chili Pepper, Justin Thyme, Mr. Manicotti, Caesar Romano…), take a shot at the increasingly popular cooking shows and stir well. What do you get? You get a recipe for an amusing, frothy, yet not lightweight romp. The characters are lovable and believable, even when they leave you shaking your head in wonder over their antics. The story flows well and pulls you in very quickly. Although you might think quite early in the book that you know who the villain is, I would be surprised if you’d truly manage to solve this mystery before the final pages.


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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, founder of Authors' Coalition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com). It 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 and reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've loved. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page.

First Novelist Brings Us Katrina and Her Disaster-Battered Sisters in Other Parts of the Country

Title: After the Floods
Author: Bruce Henricksen
Publisher: Lost Hills Books
Genre: Novel, 212 pages, perfect bound
ISBN: 978-0-9798535-0-0

Reviewer: Susan Larson in the New Orleans Times-Picayune
Susan Larson can be reached at slarson@timespicayune.comPermission to reprint this review has been granted by Lynn Cunningham of the Times-Picayune. lcunningham@timespicayune.com

"A Whimsical Look at Poet-Katrian Exile"

In his first novel, After the Floods, former New Orleanian Bruce Henricksen tells a tale of two cities--New Orleans and Cold Beak, MN--both recovering from disastrous floods, both filled with folks trying to make a comeback. And not just people--add some crows and dogs into the mix.

The novel opens with George and Ruby surveying post-Katrina damage on Laurel Street. "Laurel is the street where Ruby's heart had been broken, broken with the branch that snapped in the storm, sending her eggs splattering to the sidewalk." The two fly north, a couple making a fresh start.

Billy Boischild is another New Orleanian who heads to Cold Beak, leaving behind a life in New Orleans in which he engaged in experiments in scientific faith implantation. He rents a trailer and starts examining his life, engaged in constant electronic spiritual debate with God and a nun called Sister Ann . . . But life in Cold Beak is wide open, as Billy finds . . .

The characters move in and out of one another's lives, looking for love and redemption, and sometimes, blessedly, finding it. Henricksen brings such fey charm to this spiritual comedy, with tender feeling for all these searchers, flying from despair toward hope, and ocassionally back again. Sometimes the reader feels she has wandered into Garrison Keillor's Minnesota, sometimes John Kennedy Toole's New Orleans. It's a short, thoroughly enjoyable flight of fancy, filled with sweet wisdom about the way we lean on--and crash into--one another.


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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, founder of Authors' Coalition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com). It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love--and that includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews and reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page.

Speaking of Summer Reading! Mindy Lawrence Provides Us with Classics! For FREE!

This is a guest entry from Mindy Lawrence. I thought it so full of good resources on the classics, you'd want to see it. (-: Carolyn, co-blogger with Joyce Faulkner.

Dr. Dan Skelton, my client at MPL Creative Resources and my former English professor, sent me his reading list for the World Lit I class he is teaching this summer. I'd read all but two of the pieces (I haven’t read Seneca or Apuleius’ “The Golden Ass”). However, I looked for the main text that he recommended on Amazon and several other places. A new book was almost $70. I got the idea of finding all the works on the Internet where his students could access them if they couldn't afford the book. I found versions online of every work on his list. I've attached it here so you can see.

I was most enthusiastic about a paid site for Beowulf which I didn't include on my list because, well, it cost money. However, the program looked interesting and the graphics on the main page were beautifully done. See the rest of the freebie list below.

Would I like to be in Dr. Skelton’s class again, this time learning from the ancients to the Renaissance? You bet!

Mindy Lawrence
MPL Creative Resources
mplcreative1@aol.com


World Literature I – Reading List Online
Instructor: Dr. Dan Skelton

Gilgameshhttp://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab1.htm

The Hebrew Bible
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/index.htm

The Iliad
http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html

The Odyssey
http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html

Agamemnonhttp://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/agamemnon.html

Oedipus the King
http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/oedipus.html

Antigone
http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.html

Lysistrata
http://drama.eserver.org/plays/classical/aristophanes/lysistrata.txt

Seneca, “On Anger”
http://www.stoics.com/seneca_essays_book_1.html

Apuleius, “The Golden Ass”
http://manybooks.net/titles/apuleiusetext99gldns10.html

Augustine
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine/textstrans.html

Beowulf
http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~beowulf/main.html
In Old English and Modern English

The Canterbury Tales
http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm

Everyman
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/everyman.htm

Carpe Diem poems:

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
http://www.bartleby.com/106/5.html

The Flea
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/flea.php

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/tovirgins.htm

Shakespeare, Hamlet
http://www.tk421.net/hamlet/hamlet.html

John Milton, X – Paradise Lost
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_10/index.shtml




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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, founder of Authors' Coalition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com). It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love--and that includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews and reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page.

Big Blog Tour for Kim Richards' "Death Mask"

Death Masks
Written by Kimberly Richards
Eternal Press, 2008 www.kim-richards.com


As part of a book tour we're participating in this month, we're reviewing
popular horror author Kim Richard's newest horror/thriller novel Death Mask,
released by Eternal Press.
Reviewed by Heidi Martinuzzi from Pretty Scary.


Someone is killing hot young boys in the local Metro Tonton Park (and it's
not me!). Bill, an unsatisfied computer tech with a lame job and lame
co-workers has one amazing girlfriend in Dixie. Dixie is not only hot, but
she's a salsa dancer who works out and even has hobbies, like pottery. When
Bill witnesses one of the local murders in the park, he suddenly becomes a
suspect as well. Bill has to balance dealing with his own investigation of
the murders with the police (who aren't much help) and with Dixie's
depressive disorder which has mysteriously come on again after being
dormant. It's not an easy time for Bill. Or Dixie.

We also get the killer's perspective in neat little segments so we can get
another point of view on everything that's going on. It fills in some
pieces, especially about the murders, and honestly does nothing to reveal
the identity of the killer. Of course, the killer is... Dah DUHN! It's a
secret. It's a twist, so I can't reveal it. Death Mask follows a traditional
thriller storyline complete with the very-necessary twist to accompany the
clearing of the name of the protagonist. What would a mystery thriller be
without a twist?

Dixie is a very complex character with deep emotional issues that prevent
her from overcoming her awkward depression. Bill's sense of inadequacy keep
him from getting farther along at work or making the most out of his life
with Dixie. It's a case of everyday problems getting in the way of people's
lives. Bill himself is completely unprepared to deal with a seemingly
dangerously intelligent killer who uses some kind of drug to kill their
victims and leaves their bodies in the park to be found by police. Bill
embarks on a near-obsessive path of researching serial-killers, the victims,
and the drug itself to a point that makes him a prime suspect in the eyes of
the police. It also doesn't do anything to improve his situation with Dixie,
who grows worse by the day. Little things that used to cheer her up no
longer move her. She has become increasingly irritable and unpredictable
emotionally.

What's also fascinating is that the people who do keep disappearing seem
somehow related to Bill's life. Like the punk kid who threatens him in line
at the fast food restaurant who later ends up face-down in the mud in the
park, or the mysteriously missing Denny from Bill's work, who was a liar and
an inconsistent friend. No wonder the police suspect Bill... but can he
prove that he's not the killer before someone he loves - someone like Dixie
- ends up dead?

Richard's work is classy and traditional, and lovers of thrillers will enjoy
and appreciate the traditional flow of her story in Death Mask. Importantly,
the imagery of the Death mask itself is used repeatedly in a very simple yet
artistic way throughout the novel; Dixie herself sculpts them in her pottery
workshop, and they appear again in an art gallery showing. The Death Mask,
an image cast of a person's face (often after death) and used in burial or
for a family's memory of that person, is a grim and macabre idea that works
perfectly for a theme as dastardly as gruesome murders in a park.

And yes you have your standard amounts of mental breakdown, dementia, and
murder mystery blood, so the depraved aspects of your soul will find
themselves entertained.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, founder of Authors' Coalition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com). It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love--and that includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews and reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page.

On Literature, Readings and "Months and Seasons"

I had trouble deciding on where to put this report from Chris Meeks, author, friend and fellow UCLA instructor. It is a success story about promotion, cetainly, but it is also about literature. A book of short stories in particular. I hope you enjoy it as a guest post.


Carolyn--

Yesterday was a big day for me. Would people buy my book? Would they come to the reading? Yesterday morning the ranking for "Months and Seasons" on Amazon at #1,763,891--so low, it didn't really exist. I sent out a reminder to people that "today was the day," and that seemed to help. By midnight last night, Months and Seasons was ranked #9305.

All day yesterday, friends were writing e-mails that said, "Your reading has been on my calendar for weeks, but..." Things came up. People couldn't come. Would I get the 80 people I hoped for? I'm happy to say it was at least that. Most people I asked guessed it at a hundred people in the audience--which is something considering there was a $10 admission to the reading. Not only that, sales of the book there were brisk, too. I signed at least 50 books.

Marketing aside, the reading itself rocked. Each actor brought sensitivity and comic timing to each story, and the audience laughed in all the right spots. When Dracula soared into the night, for instance, the actor held out his arms and tilted his head back and said the lines from memory, and I heard people gasp. Four stories were read: "Dracula Slinks Into the Night," "A Shoe Falls," "The Wind Just Right," and "A Whisker."

While the day worked out extremely well, it was really the culmination of two-and-a-half years of planning, from agreeing to having my work presented, to writing the stories, having them edited, rewritten, reedited, proofed, and published, to writing a monthly newsletter, to getting the book designed, to printing and sending out ARCs, to e-mailing people to make sure they can come to the reading. Whew. It was a mammoth undertaking, but my book is now out in the world.

Thank you for your wonderful part in all this, not only inspiring me, but also writing reviews and offering advice. The reading was videotaped and in about a month, large chunks of it will be on YouTube. I'll let you know then.

Attached are a few photos.

Best,
Chris MeeksNoble (Not Nobel!) Prize winning author of The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, Months and Seasons and many more including plays. His e-mail is chrismeeks@gmail.com.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, founder of Authors' Coalition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com). It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love--and that includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews and reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page.

Butch Cassidy Anyone? Let's Let The Girls In On The Fun

Title: Melinda and the Wild WestAuthor: Linda Weaver Clarke
By Linda Weaver Clarke
Web: www.lindaweaverclarke.com
Genre: historical fiction
ISBN: 1-58982-367-2
Rating: 5 stars



BOOK REVIEW by Melynda Gascoyne for The Amherst Bee Newspaper: Buffalo, New York


HEAD TO THE FRONTIER FOR ‘MELINDA AND THE WILD WEST’:
For anyone who likes to read classic-styled romance novels that also have a drop of history, this is the book for you: “Melinda and the Wild West, a Family Saga in Bear Lake Valley, Idaho.” The story is set back in 1896 in Montpelier and Paris, Idaho, in the Bear Lake Valley area.

Melinda Gamble is the new schoolteacher and has relocated from Boston to teach in the community where her beloved aunt and uncle live. Being termed “headstrong” by her parents, she decides to take the job offered by her relatives in the western frontier as a way to escape from the city and the life they have forged for her.

This sets about a plan to help others by teaching. From the start, Melinda learns from her new surroundings. Right at the very beginning she comes face to face with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch in a bank robbery. What a way to start your new life in the wild frontier.

From one of her students coming to class with skunk oil that explodes, to her encounter with a black bear, there’s always something for the imagination in the book. The characters grow in their complexity as the story unfolds. From Melinda’s relationship with Jenny, (the daughter of her widowed neighbor), to Gilbert, Jenny’s father and the gentlemen who steals Melinda’s heart, it is very easy to picture the scene you are reading.

Clarke blends bits of her family history into this charming tale in the form of the children at the school to members of the community in general. She was able to write about love in a soft fashion, not full of the same type of sexual writing of most romance novels. I was impressed with the eloquence in which Clarke spun her story. It was dramatic in some spots and yet contained simply placed bits of humor. I would recommend this to anyone.


Melinda is the first in a four-book series, “A Family Saga in the Bear Lake Valley,” written by Clarke. I’m hoping that the other stories are just as interesting as this one. At the end of the book, Clarke has a section of notes in which she explains parts of the story and from where in her family they derive. Age range: 16 and older.

Learn more about Melinda and the Wild West: http://www.pdbookstore.com/comfiles/pages/LindaWeaverClarke.shtml.
She is also the author of Edith and the Mysterious Stranger, http://www.pdbookstore.com/comfiles/pages/LindaWeaverClarke4.shtml

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, founder of Authors' Coaliition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com). It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love--and that includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews and reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page.