Last Minute Shopping Tips and a Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

~ Oscar Wilde ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Adventures in YA Publishing has a great guest post HERE by Jake Kerr all about pacing.

A great way to add tension is to make your characters uncomfortable. Janice Hardy at Fiction University has a good post HERE on just that topic.

The Editor can teach all of us something about grammar. She tackles some interesting verb tense problems HERE. I know I struggle with some of these. 

Last week I offered an ARC of Gracefully Grayson to one of you. This week's winner is Greg Pattridge, a brave soul who faces middle-school kids on a daily basis and writes for that same age group. He blogs at Always in the Middle, which you can check out by clicking HERE. He always has something interesting to say. Congratulations, Greg. I will send your book out this week. Stay tuned for a terrific giveaway at the end.

I promised you some last minutes shopping tips. These are all books I think are terrific. It's a little harder now to link to my reviews at the San Francisco Book Review, so for some of these I am linking to other places. Most of these do link to my own reviews, but a few don't. Click on the titles to read more about the books. I recommend every one of these. They are the best of the best of over 160 books I reviewed this year. But first I'd like to recommend a middle-grade book that I think is destined to become a Christmas classic and will be read well beyond the middle-grade age group. Read it aloud to younger children. They will love it. Read it yourself. You will love it. It's simply charming. The book is WinterFrost by Michelle Houts. Just look at that cover! How can you resist. By the way, this is NOT the giveaway book. My granddaughter and I are reading it this week.

PICTURE BOOKS:

Imani's Moon

Little Chicken Duck

The Loch Mess Monster

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Dreidel

Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold 

MIDDLE GRADE:

Saving Lucas Biggs

The Secret Hum of a Daisy

Steering Toward Normal

Under the Egg

Screaming at the Ump

Sure Signs of Crazy 

YOUNG ADULT:

What She Left Behind

Crazy

Prisoner of Night & Fog

Family Ties

ADULT: 

Sandcastle & Other Stories

Blue Horses: Poems

The Ploughmen

Those Who Wish Me Dead

Now for the very special giveaway. I recently reviewed an absolutely gorgeous

book, An American River Almanac: Reflections on Nature Throughout the Year. If you love beautiful nature photographs and lovely nature writing, you will enjoy this stunning book. It will be my holiday gift to one of you. To win, all you need do is have a US address, be a subscriber or follower and tell me that in a comment you leave on this post. If you are reading this in your email, click HERE to go to the blog so you can leave a comment. If you would like extra chances, please spread the word by posting the link on a Tweet, blog post, Facebook, or any other way you like. Let me know what you have done in your comment, and I will put in extra chances for you for each that you do.

I wish all of you the happiest of holiday seasons and a happy new year. I may disappear for a week or two, but I'll be back. We have lots of family time planned. 

Don't forget to check out Shannon Messenger's wonderful blog HERE for many more Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday reviews and giveaways.