On my bookshelf, I have all sorts of outdated Rick Steves guidebooks from the days my husband I roamed around Europe with our kids. In one of his books, he recommended that parents have their kids watch movies to help get them excited about different locations before they arrived. I remember picking up the Italian-dubbed … More A Few International Reads
How do you pick out a Christmas present or birthday gift for a young reader? There are all sorts of ways to choose, but sometimes I like to pick out a book set in a place where those readers live or featuring characters from the same locality. Readers have enjoyed recognizing places from Suspect, my … More Regional Reads for Christmas
I suspect that one of the reasons that I’ve written two cross-cultural books is that I like reading them. That’s why I’m excited about the launch of Natalie Dias Lorenzi’s Flying the Dragon. For a behind the scenes look at how this book came to be, you can visit Emu’s Debuts for the first installment. … More Flying the Dragon
Betsy Bird decided to revisit her Top 100 Children’s books poll on her Fuse#8 blog. She made a few rule changes to tweak the results. If I remember correctly, she wound up putting together a separate poll for kids. She also asked that people vote for the first book in a series as the representative … More Revisiting the Top 100 Chapter Books
I was so delighted to see that Casey McCormick and Natalie Aguirre received some well-deserved recognition for their fabulous blog, Literary Rambles. It made theWriter’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers in the May/June issue. They came in at #13 under “Everything Agents.” In addition to spot-lighting agents, they also profile writers. So this is … More Literary Rambles
A hundred years ago today, the Titantic went down with more than 1600 souls lost. Sure, I’ve seen the James Cameron movie, but my favorite depiction of that horrific moment of history came out 25 years ago with the publication of Richard Peck’s GHOSTS I HAVE BEEN. Blossom Culp, the story’s main character, made her first appearance … More Ghosts I Have Been
When my son started running long distance, his coach said something pretty close to the following: “Sprinters are born, but you can be successful in long distance if you put in the miles.” (Now, of course, the elite long distance runners are probably also born, but I’m guessing that even they need to put in some serious … More Putting in the Miles
Frankly, I’ve always been terrified by the thought of writing historical fiction because of how much research need to be done in order to get the time, setting and characters right. I’ve had a big enough challenge with contemporary fiction whether it was constructing an imaginary a realistic Italian estate in Saving the Griffin or learning the proper … More Writing Historical Fiction
Ever since I was third or fourth grade, Christmas has meant new books. And new books usually meant new places to travel from Middle Earth to Prince Edward Island. For this holiday season, I had the chance to visit Llyvraneth in Elizabeth C. Bunce’s STAR CROSSED. It wound up being a seasonal book as well since … More Holiday Reading
First Page Panda is a relatively new blog that shares the first pages of new novels. SUSPECT was posted today. This does look like a great place to taste books by familiar and unfamiliar authors.
Kristin Wolden Nitz 