Avenging the Owl -- Review and Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

“Maybe you’ve made something mediocre–there’s plenty of that in any artist’s cabinets–but something mediocre is better than nothing, and often the 

near-misses, as I call them, are the beckoning hands that bring you to perfection just around the blind corner.” 

~ Sally Mann, Photographer ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Alex Limberg did a guest post on Kristin Lamb’s blog that is worth your time. He talks HERE about making every page interesting. Check it out. 

Writers Helping Writers always has such good stuff. The post HERE is the first post I’ve seen in a long time on pacing. Don’t miss it. 

I tend to write in close third person PoV and often my critique partners think my stories would be better in first person. I am not comfortable with that PoV, but maybe I should try harder. Anyway, it’s something I think about a lot. Janice Hardy at Fiction University has a really useful post HERE on this very subject. 

Thanks for all the lovely birthday wishes. We had a nice quiet family evening, which is exactly what I wanted. My sister and brother-in-law were here almost a week and we got so much done! Now I feel like the move is doable. Before, I was, frankly, really freaking out. My husband's health has not improved, but we continue with tests but no answers. And of course, there is a lot of brownie baking for my contractor. I do what I have to do to get that remodel finished. 

Last time I wrote, I promised an ARC of Gary D. Schmidt's fabulous Orbiting Jupiter. The winner this week is Natalie Aguirre. Congratulations, Natalie! If you don't know Natalie (have you been living in a cave with no wifi?), she is a writer and blogger extraordinaire. You can find out more about her HERE at Literary Rambles, a blog which should not be missed. Natalie, I will get the book out to you this week, assuming I haven't packed it already. For the rest you, please keep reading. I have another terrific book for you this week.

I had an email a few weeks back from author Melissa Hart asking if I would be interested reviewing in her middle-grade novel, Avenging the Owl. I am something of a bird lover, so found the premise interesting and requested a copy. I'm glad I did. Let me tell you about it. 

Solo Hahn, whose mother was a big Star Wars fan, has a perfect life in Southern California. Nice house near the beach, terrific friends, and plenty of time to surf. But the wheels are about to come off. Solo's father, a writer, falls into depression and tries to kill himself. Solo's parents decide the best thing to do is to move to Oregon where they can get a fresh start, but nobody bothers to ask Solo what he thinks. The next thing he knows, they are having a big yard sale and everything is being sold. The only good thing to come out of it is a little stray kitten Solo finds while they are having the sale. The family moves to a trailer house in the middle of nowhere (nowhere near the beach, that is) and Solo and his kitten begin their new life. What keeps him going is his plan to run away back to Southern California to stay with his best friend. 

But when you live in the backwoods, sometimes nature has a way of changing everything, and when an owl snatches Solo's beloved kitten, he loses it. He grabs a gun owned by the father of the only friend he's made and goes after the owl, but injures his friend instead. He is assigned to community service working with raptors at a rescue center. Solo is angry and afraid -- afraid of the birds, afraid his father will try to kill himself again, afraid he will never see his surfing buddies or the ocean again, afraid he will be sent to juvenile hall if he doesn't succeed at the raptor center, and more. It's a lot for a kid to deal with and it makes for a rich, complex novel. The cast of characters is filled with diverse, fully-rounded people who readers can relate to and care about. Melissa Hart's

Melissa Hart

writing is crisp and polished and her story is very compelling. The book won't be out until April, but I suggest you put it on your TBR list and keep an eye open for it or, better yet, pre-order it. It's worth it. And look at that cover. How can you resist? 

I have a gently-read ARC for 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.

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

Orbiting Jupiter -- Review and Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that makes us more alive than the others."
~ Martha Graham ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Writers Helping Writers have a terrific post on Mastering the Art of the Cliffhanger Chapter Ending HERE. Don’t miss it. 

The Editor’s Blog has a fun post HERE with lots of good reminders of how to engage readers. 

Anne R. Allen always has good advice. HERE you will find a good post on editing your first chapter. C’mon. We all have to do it! 

Just a heads up. I probably won't be here next week. My sweet sister and brother-in-law are coming to celebrate my birthday and giving me the best birthday present ever -- helping us sort out and pack up as we get closer to our move, which will happen after the world's longest renovation is done -- soon, I hope. But I will be back and when I write next, I will be seventy. Yup -- the big seven-oh! Holy smoke but I'm getting on. I'd like to thank all you young whippersnappers for sticking around and reading.

Last week I offered my gently-read copy of Nanny X Returns by Madelyn Rosenberg to one of you. This week's winner is Suzanne Warr. Congratulations, Suzanne! If you don't know her, Suzanne is a North Carolina writer and Tae Kwon Do Black Belt who blogs at Tales from the Raven. You can find her blog HERE. It's worth checking out. Suzanne, I will get your book out to you this week. For the rest of you, I have another giveaway, so please keep reading.

I cannot believe I haven't written about this book before, but it's another book I ran across as I sorted and packed books. If you have read my blog for awhile, you probably know I think Gary D. Schmidt is one of the best writers around. I have reviewed a couple of his books before, Okay for Now HERE and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy HERE. This week I'd like to tell you about Schmidt's latest book, Orbiting Jupiter. It's simply terrific. Here is the review I wrote for the San Francisco Book Review. 

Jack gets the news his parents are taking in a foster child, a boy Jack’s age who will share his room and chores on the farm. They will also both be going into sixth grade. But when Jack finds out Joseph had spent time in juvenile hall for trying to kill a teacher and that he is a father, Jack wonders what they’ve gotten themselves into. There are no secrets that last very long in a small-town middle school, and word about Joseph soon travels through the halls, and bullies get to work. But Jack has Joseph’s back, even though it costs him. As time goes on, Jack learns Joseph’s whole, heart-breaking story and meets his abusive father. Then everything changes.

“That was how Joseph heard for the first time that he never would see Madeleine again, never touch her again, never talk to her again, never walk through the woods with her again.”

When Gary D. Schmidt has a new book come out, it is cause for celebration in

Gary D. Schmidt

the world of middle-grade readers. His sense of story and his elegant writing carries readers through even the most difficult of subjects, and Schmidt never shies away from honestly examining the difficult things young people face. This moving coming-of-age tale is one of his finest books and deserves readership far beyond the middle-grade crowd.

I have a gently-read ARC for 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.

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

Two Reviews -- Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and Coaltown Jesus

Thought for the Day:

"You need to believe in the characters whose story you're writing. You need to know them intimately. And you need to show them to your reader."

~ Elaine Marie Alphin ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

The Editor’s Blog has a don’t-miss poster HERE named Don’t Explain, Don’t Explain, Don’t Explain.

If you are a grammar nerd, as I am, the jokes found HERE will be right up your alley.

The Write Practice has a fun and useful post HERE of Ten Lessons Dr. Seuss Can Teach Writers. 

Last week I promised my gently-read ARC of Hero by Sarah Lean to one of you, and this week Carol Baldwin's persistence paid off. Congratulations, Carol! I will get that book right out to you. If you don't know Carol, she is a writer working diligently on her first novel. You can find out more about her at her brilliantly titled blog, Carol Baldwin's Blog or through a wonderful newsletter she and author Joyce Moyer Hofstetter called Talking Story. Click on the titles to see these. You won't be disappointed. 

One of my goals this year is to read more of the books on my TBR list. The last couple of years, it seems, I have been reading a LOT of books for review, but very few of the books I missed somehow but kept adding to my staggering TBR list. So I ordered a couple from my library and got busy. 

The first is Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt. I love Schmidt's writing. I have and read and loved It Came from the Stars and The Wednesday Wars, and Okay for Now. I reviewed Okay for Now HERE, in case you missed it. I kept running across mentions of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and put it on my list. I'm so glad I finally got to it this week. 

Turner Buckminster is the son of a minister who has taken a position in a small town in Maine. It is 1912. Being the new kid in town is never easy, but being the son of the new minister carries a lot of expectations and baggage with it. The other boys in town don't welcome Turner. In fact, they seem to set about making his life rather miserable. They aren't alone in that. A widow/busybody pounces on him for the smallest things, and he is assigned by his father to read to her and play the organ for her. In spite of all this, Turner finds time to meet and befriend a young black girl who lives on a nearby island, an island the town would like to see uninhabited. This causes even more problems for Turner. But some strange alliances grow out of all this. There is tremendous growth and tremendous loss for Turner. The book is filled with fascinating, well-developed, believable characters, a moving story, and absolutely gorgeous, breath-taking  writing. 

“The sea breeze found him and twisted around him like a cat asking for a bowl of milk. It followed him up into the island and didn’t stop its play even when Turner went up to the Eason place—the burned ruins already cleansed by the winter and starting to find their way back into the woods.”

When I worked in advertising a long time ago, one of my jobs was selling advertising space in a computer newspaper. We had a half dozen sales people in our San Jose office, and they were some of the best and brightest folk I ever worked with. We had an office copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for those days when everything seemed to go wrong. We would take it down and read sections aloud to each other to pull us out of our funks. Why, you might ask, is she telling us this story. Well, as I read Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, I kept thinking I need to have a copy of this in my office for those days when my writing goes off the rails or I get stuck. I will pull it down and read a few passages of this beautiful book, and it will pull me out of my writing funk. 

The other book I picked up at the library is Coaltown Jesus by Ron Koertge. I wish I could remember where I read about this one. It is really YA and very short. It is written in verse, so it is a really quick read. Too quick in my mind. In fact, I kept putting it aside for short periods because I just didn't want to get to the end. Seriously. 

Walker's older brother, Noah, seventeen, had died recently, and Walker sends up some prayers to whoever is up there to help his mom. She just can't seem to stop crying. Walker wakes up one morning and Jesus is standing in his room. He's not there to perform miracles, but to hang out with Walker and help him figure some things out. And hanging out with Jesus turns out to be a pretty interesting time. Jesus has a wicked sense of humor and, here's a surprise, great insight into people's lives. 

“They stopped in front of Balk’s Hardware

A sign in the window said,

ALL KINDS OF NAILS

Jesus stared at his hands. ‘I  mean nails

Are a miracle and God is in them, but they

Still give me the shivers.’”

This is an incredible piece of work. I am definitely going to have to find more of Koertge's books. If any of his others are half as good as this one, I sure want to read them. 

I don't have a book to give away this week. I intend to buy copies of these two for myself, and I hope I've convinced some of you to get them as well. If you are a reader or a writer, these are not to be missed. Readers will love them and writers will love them and learn from them. I can't recommend them highly enough. This is one of the best couple days of reading I've had in a long time.

What is simply the best book you've read lately? Please let me know in your comment. I have a couple spots available on my TBR list now. In any case, I hope you will leave a comment. If you are reading this in your email, click HERE to go to the blog so you can leave a comment. And do come back next week. I will be back to giving away books then.