by Phyllis | Jan 21, 2020 | Book reviews
Andrew Peterson’s middle-grade Wingfeather series that started out as an amusing tale full of rollicking names moves to epic scope along the way. In this fourth book, The Warden and the Wolf King (2014), it builds to a mighty conclusion full of heroic deeds....
by Phyllis | Jan 16, 2020 | Book reviews
Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga tells the tale of the widow and three children of the King of Anniera, a blessed island kingdom overwhelmed nine years before by the dreaded fangs of Dang. This book is Book 3 of the four-book saga, The Monster in the Hollows (2011)....
by Phyllis | Dec 1, 2019 | Book reviews
Dreamtreaders by Wayne Thomas Batson, a reviewPublished 2014 by Thomas Nelson, 289 pagesGenre: Middle grade fantasy fiction In Dreamtreaders, a middle-grade story by Wayne Thomas Batson (2014), Archer Keaton, age 14, serves humanity as a Dreamtreader. In his...
by Phyllis | Nov 22, 2019 | Book reviews
Failstate: Legends by John Otte, Book 2 of Failstate seriesPublished 2013 by Marcher Lord Press, 455 pagesGenre: Young adult superhero tale, suitable for middle grade and up Failstate: Legends by John Ottte (2013) looks like a graphic novel, but it isn’t....
by Phyllis | Nov 20, 2019 | Book reviews
Robert Treskillard concludes his terrific YA Merlin trilogy with this book, Merlin’s Nightmare (2014), leaving some threads open for starting a new work focused on Arthur. I’m really enjoying Treskillard’s re-imagining of Merlin as a non-magician. Merlin is a...
by Phyllis | Sep 4, 2019 | Book reviews
The Book of the King (2007), by Jerry B. Jenkins and Chris Fabry, tells a tale full of the supernatural. Its young protagonist, Owen, is one courageous guy. Owen evades violent bullies and comes home to the bookstore where he lives with his indifferent father....
by Phyllis | Jul 28, 2015 | heirlooms
This slide rule belonged to my dad, the engineer. Eldred W. Hough, although he was the oldest son, wasn’t named for his father, Thomas C. Hough. Instead, his younger brother got the name Thomas Hough. So, why did the younger one get the father’s name?...
by Phyllis | Jul 21, 2015 | heirlooms
Thomas Hough, an enterprising young man, was born in 1844 into a lower-class family in Yorkshire, England, and didn’t like his prospects. His education stopped at the sixth grade, and his dad was a wagon driver. He got a job at the local cotton mill as a lift...
by Phyllis | Jun 22, 2015 | heirlooms
This is about Granny Jennie’s mother Mary Jane, who dominated the Illinois prairie around her in the late 1800s but may have longed for a trip to … Switzerland? My great-grandmother, Mary Jane Robertson, always wanted to go to Switzerland, or so I imagine....
