"Young students compete in a futuristic setting in this story that teaches useful lessons about teamwork, family, and forgiveness.
Jackie Yeager's
Spin the Golden Light Bulb is a relatable story with valuable lessons for young readers. It imagines a future in which top elementary school students from every state are chosen to compete in a prestigious invention contest called the Piedmont Challenge.
"Kia Krumpet is a kid who genuinely wants to succeed at the competition. She dreams of following in her grandmother's footsteps by earning one of the Golden Light Bulbs that come with a spot in Camp Piedmont, where chosen teams prepare for the national competition and vie for a spot in Piedmont Inventors' Prep School.
"While other states' teams are comprised of winners from schools throughout the state, the entire New York team is selected from one school, earning them the nickname "The Crimson Five." If Kia and her team win, she can train to be an inventor; if not, she'll be "sorted" into a math curriculum in her hometown, where students are divided into specific tracks.
"Most of the book focuses on the five students' time at Camp Piedmont and their assignments there. At times, the story gets sidetracked by young adult staples that feel unnecessary here, such as a new sport the teams play at camp, or nods to a futuristic 2071 setting that don't impact the main story much.
"The majority of the story focuses on the interplay between the children, though, as they use their myriad skills to develop both a winning idea and a presentation that will impress the judges. Despite all attending the same school, the students barely know one another; this lends itself well to themes of learning to work as a team and overcoming first impressions.
"At the same time, Kia learns more about her grandmother's experience with the competition, and the Crimson Five get an unexpected extra challenge to overcome from an authority figure. These plot lines make space for the audience to solve problems alongside the characters, teaching useful lessons about teamwork, family, and forgiveness."
"This touching historical novel from Rene (I Once Knew Vincent) imagines a tender moment in the rough-and-tumble life of the legendary Calamity Jane. In the late summer of 1876, 12-year-old Jimmy Glass must take his ailing Pa and six-year-old sister from their mining claim into nearby Deadwood, S.D. Hank Glass, who has smallpox, is led to the pest tent with the rest of the quarantined victims, while Jimmy and his sister are taken in by brothel owner Miss Dora DuFran at the behest of none other than Calamity Jane. In a rare vocal moment, Flower Glass, normally a quiet child who is averse to touch, introduces herself as "Ower," which immediately becomes "Hour." Hour's sweet and shy nature endears her to the working girls at Diddlin' Dora's. In their brief acquaintance, Jimmy and Jane each manage to save the other's life, and the two children find a place in Jane's heart, despite her gruff exterior. Rene's tale features all the action and excitement of a classic western, and its humor and pathos add depth. (Feb.)"
(12/29) Mentioned in article about San Antonio's Tricentennial:
Excerpt: "
a meticulously documented volume that is essential to understanding San Antonio's evolution from a Spanish adobe pueblo to a 19th-century town built with sturdy German-cut limestone."
"Working in a newsroom is not as glamorous or exciting as most people imagine.
"In fact, it can be downright boring. Just ask the staff at The Best in the West, a small-market Arizona television station where anchors Jean Ann Maypin and Tom Carter mindlessly read a teleprompter several times a night and periodically cut to local reporters Ellen Peters and Frank Kowalski. On slow news days, the journalists report on PTA meetings, social functions, and government wrangling. It can be pretty ho-hum, but every so often they get to cover a more significant issue-a uranium spill at a remote mine, a health crisis among Native Americans, the spike in homelessness. You'd think that this would impress the station's New York City-based owners and encourage them to devote additional resources to investigative stories, but you'd be wrong. The bosses' interests are strictly financial: profits and ratings are all that matter. Though this likely sounds like a contemporary tale, it's set in the late 1970s, long before there was an expectation of political correctness in the workplace; explicit racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic comments are newsroom staples. This shocks Debbie Hanson, a young and enthusiastic recent hire. As Ellen takes the newcomer under her wing, she discovers that her protégée has periods of mental instability. This provokes constant speculation among Debbie's co-workers and leaves the young reporter feeling increasingly isolated and pressured. Unfortunately, although the novel raises important political concerns, the newsroom staffers are too clichéd to resonate as real people. Likewise, the money-hungry station owners and narcissistic anchors are so one-dimensional that they read like caricatures. At the same time, anyone doubting that we've made progress over the past 40 years need only read this to be reassured.
"A fast-paced, but familiar, story of a bygone era."
"Browning's essay explores the confluence of natural and interior landscapes in a manner both beautiful and searing.
Two years of medical procedures, bouts of pneumonia, surgery to mend an unstable fracture followed by a year of relearning how to walk, and the effects of advanced endometriosis left L. M. Browning feeling violated, her body fragile. After miscarrying twins and ending the relationship with their father, she was reduced to a shadow of herself.
"It was her friend Mallory who held her together as denial was breached and grief poured out, and it was Mallory who suggested that they drive out west to the majesty of wide horizons and the Milky Way in its unobstructed glory-a magic that helps the mind and heart soften and heal.
"Their drive took them to the Taos home of Mallory's friends, a simple place set on a "sparse hill." Kind and welcoming, they offered Browning a spacious shower, a bed with crisp, fresh sheets, and a warm, heavy blanket. Their caring ways "bound like a bandage around my vagabond soul," she writes. "I'd been living out of a bag since the miscarriage-evicted by the hand of circumstance from the life I'd had and still trying to find the place where I now belonged."
"In an essay that explores the confluence of natural and interior landscapes in a manner both beautiful and searing, Browning, an award-winning author and poet, seeks the strength to carry her losses and live the life she would now have to live, reckoning time as a counting of days that "would have been" in the lives of her twins.
"Instead of a way to forget, the landscape of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains helped her find a way to bear the remembering, and in it to find peace and meaning. Taking us into her inner world, Browning calls us to feel our own pain, and through it, carve a way to acceptance."
"There are obviously many rules in Humility Rules. But it's erroneous to think of this book in the negative. With anything, we improve with instruction. This is an instruction book. It does not fit the mold of other "self-help" books because it does not care about your feelings. It cares about you, and how you deal with others, and God. Seems to me that is more important than your feelings."
"A warmly spiritual experience is achieved here, as the novel rushes toward a dawn that is both surprising and deeply emotional.
"Keith Rosson's
Smoke City is a brilliantly haunting tale of forgiveness and redemption even in the face of abject failure.
"Marvin Deitz has lived many lives since his original incarnation as Geoffroy Thérage, executioner of Joan of Arc. The Curse, as he calls it, refuses him the luxury of forgiveness, always finding ways to kill him before he reaches the age of fifty-seven and then reincarnating him somewhere else as someone else to suffer anew.
"His skeptical therapist and his storefront landlord with mob ties only make matters worse. But when he sees a woman on a talk show in Los Angeles claiming to house the spirit of Joan within herself, Marvin determines to seek her out and perhaps finally lay centuries of ghosts to rest.
"Mike Vale-an alcoholic, once-prolific painter-picks up the hitchhiking Marvin. Mike comes with his own set of baggage-a broken marriage, the loss of all rights to his previous work, a dead-end job in a fast-food restaurant, and self-destructive tendencies. Their journey from Oregon through California and their encounters with the "smokes," mysterious apparitions that flicker into existence all over the southwestern United States, gradually reverse their respective downward spirals.
"The novel highlights the interconnectedness of people, not only in the present but also across space and time. It insists there is something mystical that binds us all together, though the context of that bond is left ambiguous. A warmly spiritual experience is achieved here, free from the crutches of both religious propaganda and New Age inanity.
"Moments of poetic loveliness in the prose are counterbalanced with a gruffness befitting the novel's main characters. Marvin's journal entries chronicle his time as Geoffroy; they are brutal in their renderings of torture and the squalid living conditions of the French poor in the 1400s. Mike's struggles with alcoholism and inadequacy are equally agonizing. But the pages grow brighter as the novel rushes toward a dawn that is both surprising in its wandering path and deeply emotional.
"In
Smoke City, depravity and grace meet in a powerful, profound, and lavish banquet for the soul."
Reviewed by Meagan Logsdon
January/February 2018
(1/17) Author interview scheduled with State of Wonder; air date TBD.
