The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill Aladdin Paperbacks, 2002 113 pages It's a common scenario in juvenile literature: misunderstood, marginalized kid meets sympathetic, unconventional adult, and epiphanies/personal growth/life changes ensue. In The Year of Miss Agnes, the kid is 10-year-old Fred(erika), an Athabascan Indian living in a 1940s Alaskan bush village. The adult … Continue reading “I could do something really big”
What Little Girls are Made of
A Christmas Like Helen's by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, ill. by Mary Azarian 2004: Houghton Mifflin Company 32 pages Christmas always puts me in a historical frame of mind. From soon after Thanksgiving until past Epiphany, stories and trivia and memories flow constantly through my mind like a silent soundtrack to everything I do. I think about … Continue reading What Little Girls are Made of
Put It in Writing: Inspiration from letters, historic and otherwise
Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present ed. Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler Dial Press, 2005 824 pages Several years ago, I worked as a book reviewer for the local newspaper. Every few weeks, I dropped by the paper's downtown office and browsed through a small room full of soon-to-be-published books. … Continue reading Put It in Writing: Inspiration from letters, historic and otherwise
Read Like a Girl 