Gracefully Grayson -- Review and Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”

~ Maya Angelou ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Writers Helping Writers has an interesting guest post by Jennie Nash about overcoming book doubts. Click HERE to read it. 

Janice Hardy at Fiction University has some great ideas for ways to your writing up a notch. Check it out HERE.

Kathy Temean at Writing and Illustrating has a good post on Point of View with some suggested reading and good reminders. You can find it by clicking HERE. 

I have a nice surprise for you. Good news on last week's giveaway. When I was digging through my ARCs this week, I realized I have TWO ARCs of Jane Yolen's A Plague of Unicorns! So this week we have two winners -- Janet Smart and Joy Acey! WooHoo for you both. I will be sending your books out this week. If you don't know these ladies, check out their blogs. Janet blogs at Creative Writing in the Blackberry Patch and Joy posts a poem almost every day at Poetry for Kids Joy. Just click on the titles of their blogs to check them out. And for the rest of you, yes, I have another great giveaway this week.

I have grandchild duties tonight, so I have to make this quick. I recently

reviewed a most extraordinary middle-grade novel I hope will find it's way into classrooms and libraries all over. It's such an important book and really well written. The book is Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky. Here is the 5-star review I wrote for the San Francisco Book Review.

Grayson Sender has a secret. It isn’t that he loves to draw pictures of princesses, but it is that he wants to be a princess. He is sure he is a girl, but no one who knows this sixth-grade boy feels that way. Grayson has kept his secret well, even though it isolates him and has kept him from making many friends. His life hasn’t been easy since his parents were killed in an accident, and he had to move in with his aunt and uncle, although they have done their best to make him feel a part of their family. But when the school play is announced, and Grayson’s teacher says he can read for any role, he decides to audition for the role of Persephone, the female lead. What troubles this begins.

Amy Polonsky has bravely taken on a subject that has not been touched on in middle-grade literature, but few can deny the subject of being transgender is

Ami Polonsky

one young readers should know about. This well-written and sympathetic book should be a great jumping-off point for class discussions and hopefully will allow young people with gender identification issues to lead more normal lives.  

Next week I hope you give you some last-minute shopping tips for the holiday season. And, of course, I will have a giveaway as well, so please stop by. This week I am giving away an ARC of Gracefully Grayson. 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.

The Other Half of My Heart -- Review and Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

“You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”   

 ~ Maya Angelou ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Fiction University has a great post on character development you can find HERE.

The ladies at Writers Helping Writers have a fantastic post on how to have your characters show what they don’t want to show. I know. Really interesting, huh? Click HERE for this don’t-miss article.

The Chicago Manual of Style has a lot of good things to offer on-line. I get an email every so often with a question/answer session that I find really helpful. Click HERE for a look at one. 

Last week I offered a signed copy of Cousins and Robbers -- Tales of Black Jack Jetty by Michael A. Carestio to one of you. This week's winner is jennienzor. Congratulations to you, Jenni! I will be sending your book out this week. For the rest of you, I have another great giveaway, so keep reading.

A few months ago, I read about a book on Carol Baldwin's Blog that sounded terrific, and then I was lucky enough to win it! Yay for me! And thanks, Carol, for choosing me. I wasn't able to get time read The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee T. Frazier until our trip to Utah, but I was glad I had time to savor it. It is so good.  

Keira King and Minerva King, twin sisters, had a lot in common, but on the face of things they were very different. Keira was born black like their mother and Minerva was white, just like their father.  When the girls are eleven, their Grandmother Johnson sends for the girls to come to visit her in the South so they can compete in the Miss Black Pearl Preteen of America. Having grown up in Washington state, the South was really a foreign place to them. Before the trip, the girls go shopping with their paternal grandmother, and, for the first time, Minerva sees real bigotry against her twin. When they reach the south,  Keira is no longer the outsider. She fits right in to her grandmother's community. Minerva, on the other hand, finds herself suffering at the hands of bigots and realizes what her sister has been living with for a long time. 

The family Sundee T. Frazier has created is very authentic, with very real

Sundee T. Frazier at work

problems and relationships. The immediate family of the girls is close and loving. One of the grandmothers is also quite loving, while the other -- not so much. The prejudice Grandmother Johnson exhibits is a real eye-opener, not just for Minerva, but for all of the readers of this fine book. This book should be in every classroom and school library. It will do a lot of good. But beyond that, it is just a good story, well-written, and very powerful. It will open a lot of minds as Sundee T. Frazier's fan base grows. 

I will add one more to that growing fan base next week as I am going to give my inscribed hardback copy of The Other Half of My Heart to one of you. All you need do is have a US address, be a follower or subscriber (check the right-hand column -- it's free and easy), and leave a comment. If you want extra chances, Tweet about the give away or post about it on your blog or on Facebook. Let me know in your comment that you have done that, and I will give you extra chances. Next week, one of you will be the lucky winner.

Thanks for reading my blog. Now please click HERE to go over to Shannon Messenger's wonderful blog for more Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday reviews and giveaways.