Dining with Squirrels

Contemporary re-telling of Romeo and Juliet (duh) by Sharon Draper who wrote the excellent Stella by Starlight.  This was published in 1999 and I felt like it was the effort of a beginning writer with great ideas and  a love of teenagers.   SO, I looked Ms. Draper up on Wikipedia and see that she […]

Sharon Draper is such an excellent writer.  This was our 8th grade Book Club’s last book of the year.  Stella lives in Bumblebee, North Carolina in 1939.  Her family lives in a black enclave threatened by the Klu Klux Klan.  Draper does such a good job of telling the broader story of that time and […]

I visited the Soviet Union with my parents on a vacation (!) in 1986 so have a personal interest in knowing what it’s like today.  Former NPR reporter Anne Garrels brilliantly organizes her book into chapters on various topics, like sexuality, human rights, religion, special needs children, and so on and shares the depth and […]