If all is going according to plan, I’ve made it to the Netherlands (with my luggage), found my B&B and the tour company office, and am headed for canal tour, foodie walking tour of the Jordaan district, and will be seeing windmills, wooden clogs, and cheese a-plenty this week…
If not, y’all really don’t want to hear from me!
Pictures if I get onto internet as planned – otherwise, you get this pre-arranged post.
Blogathonning from the Netherlands – I hope!
**kmm
Stay out of trouble,
don’t get involved…
when a friend is being bullied?
Yeah, right.
Lois Lane is a born investigator, and her Army dad’s latest move puts her into a virtual reality mystery at her newest school – yes, that Lois Lane and the Daily Planet and an online-only friend who calls himself SmallvilleGuy.
Read the free prequel short stories here (look below the book cover on left), then head to your local library or independent bookstore to get Lois Lane: Fallout.
When have you stood up against bullying?
**kmm
Book info: Lois Lane: Fallout (Lois Lane, book 1) / Gwenda Bond. Switch Press/Capstone, 2015. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My book talk: Unnerved by the tech gang at her newest school, fledgling reporter Lois investigates its hush-hush ‘field trips’ and uncovers dangers that her online pal SmallvilleGuy and her Army general father can’t ignore.
She promised herself to fly under the radar at Metropolis High, but Lois can’t stand bullies. The Warheads move in unison, finish each other’s sentences, and work on a special virtual reality project off-campus. Now, they want to ‘assimilate’ computer whiz Anavi who feels them pressing on her mind.
Recruited by editor Perry White for the Daily Planet’s new teen reporting team, Lois investigates the Warheads, finding weird connections between the principal and a local research lab.
While new friends on the Scoop team back her up during her research, her online friend SmallvilleGuy (who is he, really?) warns Lois about ARL and its virtual reality plans.
Can Lois keep Anavi safe from The Warheads?
Are their minds truly connected?
Will she ever meet SmallvilleGuy outside the virtual reality game worlds?
A smart and subtle prequel to the Superman saga that we all know so well, Lois Lane: Fallout balances high-tech gone wrong with friendship done right. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
Relax and enjoy the bounty of summer with fresh ideas for Father’s Day feasting!
Teens wrote, tested and shared yummy recipes with an eye to sustainable living in The Green Teen Cookbook (my recommendation here), with papa-pleasing choices for carnivores and vegans alike. Perhaps a leisurely brunch with Huevos Rancheros will start your Father’s Day or you’ll choose yummy Oreo Cupcakes as dessert. This 2014 paperback title is widely available.
For the funnier side of food, try some of the amazing sandwich creations dreamed up by Adrian Fiorino and chronicled in his Insanewiches (my recommendation here). Present a father in your life with a King Me checkerboard ham and cheese sandwich or the super-detailed wrestling-themed Cold Cut Cage Match. Look for a print copy of Insanewiches at your local library or order the eBook at your favorite independent bookstore.
What’s your favorite dish to cook for Dad?
**kmm
Honor or money?
A chance for schooling or a chance for wild tigers?
A rich man’s under-the-table reward for a tiger cub could ensure the future for Neel and his family, but the young man must make his own choices on his beloved Sundarban island near the mouth of the Ganges River.
Where is the line between what is best for wildlife and what is easiest for people?
**kmm
Book info: Tiger Boy / Mitali Perkins; illustrated by Jamie Hogan. Clarksbridge Publishing, 2015. [author site] [illustrator site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My book talk: Neel struggles to keep a lost tiger cub on his Bengali island away from a greedy rich man who wants its skin when the reward would pay for scholarship exam tutoring and medicine for Ma.
The headmaster has selected Neel to take the scholarship exam, despite his difficulty with math and no money for the tutor, even though the boy would rather stay in his Sunderban island village.
Rich Mr. Gupta has come to the island, hiring men like Neel’s father to cut down the special sundari mangrove trees. When rangers ask the villagers to find and return the tiger cub that escaped from a nearby island’s game preserve, the greedy man instead offers a reward for its skin.
As time for the exam gets closer and the rare tiger cub has not been found, Neel’s father reluctantly joins Gupta’s men in the search, while Neel and his big sister venture out each night, trying to find the cub before its frantic mother tears through the preserve’s fences and swims over!
Neel’s love for his home island is as strong as the sundari trees that Baba planted long ago to protect their farm from typhoons – now his appreciation for the rangers’ dedication to protecting the endangered wildlife of the Sundarbans is stronger, too. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
A conquered evil rises again,
former enemies must become allies,
and one teen girl must lead them.
In Watersmeet, Abisina searches for the father she never knew (my review here).
In Centaur’s Daughter, she leads creatures seeking peace in a war against the White Worm (my review here).
Now, she must convince her allies to truly trust one another, or lose their world to absolute evil!
**kmm
Book info: The Keeper (Watersmeet, book 3) / Ellen Jensen Abbott. Skyscape, 2013. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy from the author; cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My book talk: As evil arises with renewed powers, Abisina strives to unite centaurs, fairies, humans, dwarves, and fauns, despite their mutual distrust.
Vicious creatures streaming from the newly opened rift in the barrier mountains attack those fleeing Watersmeet and other settlements, but that’s only the beginning. If only the young woman knew what form the Worm would inhabit this time!
When Abisina requests the fairies’ help in battling the Worm and its marauding army, their queen’s daughters give conflicting reports of her mission, and one claims for herself Abisina’s necklace of power – will the folk of the land be able to overcome the evil forces without it?
Now, armed only with her faith in love, the shapeshifter and her ragtag band of friends and former opponents make a last stand against the evil trying to blight their world forever.
The tale begun in Watersmeet and The Centaur’s Daughter concludes in this finale filled with battles, intrigue and fantastic creatures. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
Stories of courage, read by professionals – welcome to World War Two, through free audiobooks.
Remember that although these free complete audiobooks are only available from Thursday through Wednesday, you can listen to them as long as you keep them on your computer or electronic device.
One tale is fiction, the other is biographical, both tell stories that we must never forget.
Rose Under Fire
by Elizabeth Wein
Read by Sasha Pick<
Published by Bolinda Publishing
A young American woman flying Allied transport planes is downed in Germany and must survive the infamous Ravensbrück Nazi concentration camp. A companion book to Code Name Verity.
Anne Frank Remembered
by Miep Gies, Alison Leslie Gold
Read by Barbara Rosenblat
Published by Oasis Audio
The couple who sheltered Anne Frank’s family risked their lives daily for two years. Now Mies shares the story of her own life and those dangerous days in World War II.
What other tales of bravery by “everyday people” do you recommend?
**kmm
Three cheers for theme days!
Hooray for Haiku Day!
Yes, we Blogathonners love playing with that 5-7-5 syllabic pattern, especially when a poem gets us that much closer to our goal of blogging every single day of June!
Again, a blank page.
Desperation? Reflection?
Poetry saves us.
My Blogathon haikus from past years are here and here and here and even here.
Do you haiku?
**kmm
Each girl-child is cherished,
every boy-baby expendable,
the old land’s prejudices reversed –
yet is this more fair?
“The girl problem” – created by cultures valuing male heirs so much that girl babies are discarded, leaving a vast imbalance of men to women when that generation wants to marry – is turned on its head in the fictive land of Koyanagar which walled itself off from (probably) India in 2042 to protect its females.
Yet not every girl in this women-dominated society believes that boys should fight on stage to be lifelong husbands, tasked with fathering girls. And not every impoverished boy believes that becoming a housebound husband with extra food is worth the price that their society demands.
Have you experienced “the girl problem” personally?
**kmm
Book info: 5 to 1 / Holly Bodger. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2015. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My book talk: Three days to decide their fates – a privileged young woman and the 5 boys competing to become her husband and provide daughters – in a series of unfair Tests that two of these 17 year olds are determined not to win!
In this walled country of Koyanagar, women are valued, unlike the land which they separated from in 2042, where so many girl babies were discarded that only 1 in 5 boys could find a wife.
Sudasa is 17 now and must choose a husband at her Test, where she finds that her powerful grandmother has ensured that the teen’s only male cousin is competing against 4 uneducated boys for her hand!
Boy number Five doesn’t think the contests are fair either – because he doesn’t want a life of tame luxuries as a house-husband. He’d rather stay with Abba in their poor coastal village and find a way over the deadly Wall to search for his mother who couldn’t get back inside when its gates closed forever a decade ago.
In Sudasa’s poetic voice and Five’s carefully reasoned tones, the three days of Tests in intelligence, skill, and sport grind on.
Can he find a way to escape both marriage and certain death as a wall-guard?
Can she escape her grandmother’s plotting and choose her own future?
Do any of Koyanagar’s other 200 girls turning 17 this year feel trapped too?
Like a funhouse mirror, the 5 to 1 ratio of girls to boys in this fictional future country points out the disappearing girls in cultures today which value male heirs over all else. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
“Eye Can See the World” by cam morris https://openclipart.org/detail/65845/eye-can-see-the-world
Interesting – check.
Timely – yes.
Understandable to everyone – maybe?
As a blogger or website owner, whether you just dash off a quick daily note or craft a series of longer posts, do you ever think about
…readers with visual impairments being able “see” your images?
…people with color-blindness easily navigating your blog?
To help you reduce potential barriers for your readership, check out some free assessment tools and adopt simple practices for your blog.
For every image, photo, or video on your page, include an alt-text description. This allows screen readers to say aloud what it is. For instance, I use book covers from publishers in almost every BooksYALove post, so I always include alt-text like “book cover of Cool Book by Great Author published by Fancy Publisher” – which also gets picked up by search engines.
Be sure to bookmark and refer to the checklists on the Website Accessibility Project’s site so that you can institute the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommended changes one at a time (and monitor how they affect your site for viewers). The very first one is providing text descriptions for non-text elements.
Read a brief background on color-blindness and web design here, then use some of the free online tools listed by Sitepoint here to check your site. Good color contrast when a website is greyscaled also helps older readers better distinguish things there.
Free and easy ways to help more people read what you’ve worked so hard to write!
What accessibility tips do you recommend?
**kmm
Slow down the pace today, as you craft unique summertime styles for yourself and your home with expert instruction.
Junk Box Jewelry leads you from tools and materials to finished fashion as you transform found items into unique bracelets, earrings, and necklaces – my recommendation here.
Peek into Stitch It Simple (my recommendation here) for patterns that you can adapt to create pillows, wall hangings, and giftables that you’ll be proud to share.
What craft books would you suggest for summer?
**kmm