MADreads

A loving Cherokee family waits at the mountain's base for a young pilot to return from war. Told in song, this picture book provides a larger to smaller view where the action and words are incorporated into the grandmother's weaving, building to a surprise finale. Author Traci Sorell's website describes her as an author of inclusive works for inquisitive young minds and this picture book showcases that beautifully, blending history, culture, and art in an uplifting way. 

After his caper novel on the moon, Weir is revisiting the idea of a lone human in space. Here the human is Ryland Grace who wakes up on a ship in space and has no memories of how or why he is there. Bit by bit (very small bits at first) he begins to put the pieces together and as he does so the reader is taken back into his recent past to see what brought him here; alone on a space ship, far from earth, with only a couple of dead crew mates as companions.

In books, television and movies I love gray characters. I don't mean mole people who never see the sun, but those who are complicated (mostly because that's how real people are) and who aren't wholly good or wholly bad. Meredith Duran has written a romance that has both a heroine and a hero who are definitely in the gray category and they are all the more intriguing for it.

There is something so honest and true about Loretta Lynn. I had no idea she was best of friends with Patsy Cline during the early 1960s until I read this book. And what a friendship they had. I'm not sure how much dust they kicked up, but there were definitely some shenanigans.