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I have, in my writing career, come to be associated with some truly amazing people. The list is too long to name them all and I wouldn't want to forget anybody. Let me say these are not only talented people in the world of books (authors, publishers, promoters), but also some terrifically kind and generous folks. These are people that work hard and always have a positive word.

There is one person I would like to single out and call my friend, although we have never met face to face. Giovanni Gelati is a blogger, book reviewer, author, publisher, promoter and graphic artist. He is affirming, generous and supportive, but also aggressive in helping his friends/authors with their promotions.

You may find his reviews of my work to be a little bias based on what I said above, but I am humbled by his kind words of my two most recent releases.

Daniel's Lot is my adaptation of the faith-based motion picture about a man tested in his personal and professional life. He turns to his faith and finds an amazing answer. The movie is available on DVD and soon to be on syndicated cable TV.

Meant To Be is the debut story for Mark Miller's One, a spiritual anthology of true stories. The series, which I am honored to headline for Trestle Press, will explore beliefs from around the world and how we all must live on this one planet.

You can read the review for Daniel's Lot at this link:

Gelati's Scoop Reviews Daniel's Lot

You can read the review

Put some faith on your Kindle!


Daniel's Lot is now available from Trestle Press on Amazon Kindle.


This Kindle version is Mark Miller's adaptation of the Dove Foundation award-winning motion picture starring Gary Burghoff of TV's M*A*S*H, now available on 0 Comments on Daniel's Lot Now Available as of 1/1/1900

Author: Vanessa Newton (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Vanessa Newton
Published: 2009 Chronicle Books (on JOMB)
ISBN: 9781934706909

Spot-on sixties-style illustrations, simple, springboard text and a soulful, sing along refrain shine a celebratory light on 18 individuals who stood tall and opened doors for generations.

More freedom reading on JOMB:

• Night Running: How James Escaped with the Help of His Faithful Dog
• Priscilla and the Hollyhocks
• Freedom Child of the Sea
• Follow the Drinking Gourd

We’d love to hear your thoughts on a favourite children’s book. Leave a voice message on our JOMB listener hotline, +1-206-350-6487, so we can include your audio in our show.

Author: Kristen Tracy (on JOMB)
Published: 2009 Random House (on JOMB)
ISBN: 9780385736879

A big thanks to guest host Lucy (10) for joining Andrea today to discuss this book.

Life can be challenging and fair’s got nothing to do with it. Parents are people. Friendship’s a worthwhile risk. There’s a lot to think about when you’re ten in the real world. Which is why I’m so glad Lucy (10) and I read this fun and fabulously thought provoking book.

Mentioned in this chat:

• Life Without Limbs: Nick Vujicic
• Don’t Need Friends
• Horrid Henry

More books including less-than-perfect families on JOMB:

• The Grandmother Doll
• When-I-was-a-little-girl
• My Dad’s A Birdman
• Mummy Never Told Me
• more here.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on a favourite children’s book. Leave a voice message on our JOMB listener hotline, +1-206-350-6487, so we can include your audio in our show.

This weekend supplied me with countless material for an edgy teen novel, or at least, a realistic one.

It all began when my husband and I decided to live life on the edge and go away for a weekend. We have two kids, seven and ten. So, we needed a responsible person to take care of them. We asked our really great grad student babysitter who is awesome with the kids. Only hitch was, she was graduating this weekend. We went to option B, a high school senior we've known since age 12, who's babysat for us for about six years. She's been to Europe with me, on author tour. However last year, she went a little teen nutty when she got into her first serious relationship. Still, she's graduating in a few days, and I thought, she's almost nineteen, what sort of trouble could she possibly cause in a day-and-a-half?

I learned this weekend that you never, never, never ask that question when a teenager is involved.

The kids are all right. The house didn't burn down. However, I've had a few eye-opening experiences into today's teenage world.

Said babysitter snuck her boyfriend in for a sleepover of her own. I say snuck because I was never asked. Also, he "left" when the kids went to bed, but his truck stayed parked in front of our house all night long. He "returned" at 7:15 by letting himself in through the front door. And she told her parents he didn't stay over. And I guess she figured no one would ever be the wiser.

WHAT?????

Doesn't she realize there are no secrets in a house with children? (Diane Sutterfield made a whole book around that very idea, The Thirteenth Tale)

Didn't she ever see Bill Cosby perform stand up or watch his TV show, even in reruns?
The seven year old is the informant.

Did she forget my husband and I were teenagers once as well?
My husband knew all of the right questions to ask our seven year old. And I did a little around the neighborhood investigative journalism. It was pretty easy to put the pieces together and figure out what went on.

It didn't get worse from there, just consistent. She didn't ask if she could have a girlfriend come over and spend the night Saturday night. She told my girlfriend, who's daughter she took along with mine to the movie, the girlfriend was just visiting.

She call me and didn't ask what she should feed the kids when the glaring leftovers in the fridge, the fresh bread, the milk, the fruit, the cold cuts, the ready make mac and chees, pasta, cans of tomoato sauce, frozen pizzas my husband stocked the fridge with on Friday left her without a clue. Instead, she called her parents and told them I hadn't really left any food in the house for my kids and she needed money to take them out to dinner.

She didn't ask if it was okay to go into my bedroom and use my bathroom repeatedly for long baths.

She didn't bother to refill the dog's water bowl and put the dog outside for six hours, then told me she did refill it when I called and asked.

I was never asked. It was the "better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" weekend.

I'm ranting. I know. I feel incredibly violated. I feel really disappointed. I feel hurt. And I feel like it's my fault. I should have known, right? What can I say in my defense? She used to be a decent kid. I mean, I've known her for almost seven years. My kids adore her. She's never, to my knowledge, exhibited this kind of irresponsible behavior before when work was involved. And I know kids go through trying times. I was a teenager, however long ago it was, but I remember when I was working, man, I tried to up my game, tried to seem responsible at least.

And this kid, she's almost nineteen. When does maturity and responsibility kick in? My husband said this is teen reality today. They don't have to be responsible. They lie for convenience sake. This is their life.

I am so out of touch.

As a human being, I ask myself, where are we going? And, how did we get here? As a parent, I ask myself, is this what I'm going to be up against? As a writer, I ask myself, is this my readership?

Because if it is, man, I've just had an intensive weekend seminar on how some teenagers at least function, what's important to them, and what to write about. It's gonna take a while to process all that. Reams of material.

In the meantime, anybody out there got the name of a decent babysitter???

Author: Eileen Spinelli (on JOMB)
Illustrator: David Slonim (on JOMB)
Published: 2009 Marshall Cavendish (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0761455256

Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Rhyming triplets and edge-to-edge smile-inducing illustrations follow the carefree foolishness of an unconventional goose and remind us to savour the spice of life.

More independent thinkers on JOMB:

• Willow
• Odd Velvet
• Suki’s Kimono
• Ruby’s Wish
• Getting to Know Ruben Plotnick
• more here.

Pop over to Under The Covers for today’s full menu of poetry offerings. Poetry Fridays are brought to us by Kelly Herold of Big A, Little A.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on a favourite children’s book. Leave a voice message on our JOMB listener hotline, +1-206-350-6487.

NO WORDS FOR WENDEL

"No Words for Wendel" is a story of determination, bravery and unexpected friendship. Wendel Wordsworth loves books. When he discovers their mysterious disappearance from all the bookshelves in town, he sets out to get to the bottom -- or top – of the cause. Single-handedly he solves the mystery and helps "the thief" accept responsibility for his selfish actions. In so doing, Wendel finds forgiveness in his heart and a new friend.

Review:
“Endearing illustrations and a charming story will keep kids (and adults) engaged in "No Words For Wendel." Wendel Wordsworth, the brave and adorable book worm, will hold the attention of even the most reluctant reader. The perfect read-along!” Mary Cunningham, author, Cynthia's Attic tween series.
purchase information: http://www.wendelwordsworth.com/ http://www.bevbruemmerbooks.com/

Donald W. Shriver, Jr. is a Professor of Ethics and President Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary.  His book Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough To Remember Its Misdeeds, recently won the prestigious Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Below we ask Shriver some questions about his book and the Grawemeyer Award.

OUP: What inspired you to write Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough To Remember Its Misdeeds?

Donald Shriver: My 1995 OUP book, An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics argued that forgiveness, often deemed a word for something religious and personal, ought to be translated into secular, collective affairs, too. That was the claim of Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition. My ’95 book explored secular-political versions of forgiveness in the recent relations of Germany, Japan, and the USA, and also in the long struggle of African Americans to become full citizens of a country whose forebears enslaved their ancestors.

In the process of writing that book, I became newly aware that forgiveness and repentance are twin requirements for real reconciliation between peoples who have harmed and suffered harm from each other. Forgiveness and repentance together build the bridge—from opposite shores– towards reconciliation between alienated peoples. So, having written about forgiveness in politics, I felt obligated to write about repentance in politics.

I have lived in the century which of all centuries of human existence has seen the most deaths from violence, organized mostly by governments in their wars, genocides, and massacres. If we don’t remember those horrors and remember them repentantly, our planet may not have another century of human life worth living.

OUP: What do you think of the United States’ response to 9/11?

Shriver: After 9/11 I think that our government missed a great opportunity to cement some closer relations with other countries of the world, in four respects:

1. We decided that we should go to “war” against our terrorist enemies rather than ferreting them out as international criminals. If we had defined them as the latter, we might have come together with many other nations equally threatened by terrorists. Instead, on false premises, we invaded Iraq, alienated much of the Muslim world, and paid little respect for countries whose citizens initially expressed great empathy for the USA and great rejection of terrorist crimes. We adopted a view, “You’re with us or against us,” which led to thoughtless, clumsy international politics.
2. We thought too highly of our military might. We thought it enough to bring democracy to the Middle East. We neglected the cultural-political understanding that might have cautioned us against the illusion that we could start and end an Iraq war in six or eight weeks.
3. Our leaders seldom if ever exercised the wisdom that might have see the 9/11 attacks and the deaths of 3000 Americans as an event which leads to increased empathy for similar unjust deaths in conflicts around the world in recent decades. It was as if the deaths of 3000 Americans were more outrageous than the deaths of 40,000 Londoners in World War Two, not to speak of the mass deaths of civilians in wars of the past 50 years on every continent. One of my heroines is a 12 year old African American grammar school student who, on visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, turned to her companion and said, “See, other people have suffered, too.” That exhibits moral maturity. We did not have it exhibited much by our national leaders after 9/11.
4. Finally, after it was demonstrated that those leaders got us into the Iraq war on false premises, none of them ever said to the U.S. or world public, “We’re sorry.” The Bush administration owes us an apology. That is a debt still to be paid by some administration in the future. To pay it is to engage in some form of repentance in our collective life.

OUP: Can you give us an example of American “patriotic repentance”?  Of a time that we have successfully made peace with a past history of injustice?

Shriver: The best American example I know is one fully described in my ’95 book: How, over a period of 14 years (1976-90) our national government apologized (in 1976) for the 1942 confinement of 120,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire for the duration of WWII, set up a version of a truth commission to interview survivors of the camps (1982), published a full report of the commission findings, authorized a sum of $50,000,000 to establish a foundation on behalf of educational interests of Japanese-Americans, and sent a presidential apology (in 1990) with a token sum of $20,000 to each living survivor of the camps. All this was done in the overt admission that this treatment of Japanese Americans in the early ‘40s, rooted in wartime hysteria, was Unamerican, a violation of the country’s best legal traditions, e.g. confinement without trial. The relevance of this event to the coming of the misnamed “Patriot Act” of 2001, is only too clear…Guantanamo, torture, rendition, Abu Ghraib, electronic eavesdropping on American citizens.

OUP: How can Americans best take responsibility for the “dark side” of our national history?

Shriver: That’s what the final three chapters of Honest Patriots are all about. Among other approaches I have explored:

• Honoring publicly the courage of citizens, often a minority, who first bring to public light the truth about past injustices, e.g. the race riots of 1921, and the long post-civil war crimes of lynching.

• Having patience, as citizens, for politicians who are honest enough to admit (if not their own) the gross mistakes of their predecessors. (e.g. in June 2005 the US Senate passed a resolution of apology for the fact that the Senate had never, in 140 years, passed a federal law against lynching.)

• Funding and visiting museums that treat parts of our negative history, e.g.the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, the national and local expressions of racism in all parts of the country. (e.g. a museum in New York City which portrayed slavery in the city’s history).

• Deciding that a national past is always worth re-study. Many Americans old and young say: “It’s history,” by which we mean, “It’s past and gone.” Not so, at least not for the descendants of people who suffered greatly in the past from collective actions of governments and other institutions. Ask Native Americans if they are about to forget the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, or the mismanagement of money owed them still by the US Department of the Interior.

• Being willing to study the history of other countries—Germany and South Africa are the leading examples in my book—who have learned to face their painful pasts: as has Germany re: the Nazis and as did South Africa re: the apartheid era as uncovered by its Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

• As parents, refusing to protest against history books our children may be studying in public school when those books are critical of what we’d like think is our country’s purely heroic past. Was General Custer really heroic? Didn’t Thomas Jefferson violate his own philosophy in keeping slaves right down to his death? Are Native Americans justified in saying that their ancestors were the objects of genocide? How did Europeans get the idea that white people were superior to all other peoples? Etc.

Maybe the ultimate hope of my book is: To do justice we must remember injustice, and to become real fellow citizens with each other in this immigrant nation, we must appreciate each other’s history.

OUP: What other countries do you think have exhibited honest repentance?

Shriver: In the book I have nominated Germany, South Africa, and the USA. I celebrate governmental, citizen, and institutional action in all three countries which qualify as honest repentance. Chile, Guatemala, and Canada offer some examples, imperfect but real.

Among the countries that have NOT shown much genuine facing of their negative pasts are Japan, Russia, China, Turkey, and Serbia. What an agenda for future apology is now building up in Zimbabwe!

OUP: What other books would you recommend for study of this subject?

Shriver: David Blight, Race and Reunion (a study of post-1865 Reconstruction)
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (the struggle to forgive)
Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths (a study of 21 truth commissions)
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness
Pumla Gobodo-Mdikisela, A Human Being Died That Night
Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull (the S. Africa TRC)
Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell (genocides of the 20th century)
Geiko Mueller-Fahrenholz, America’s Battle For God (a German view)
Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins
Roger Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow

OUP: Tell us a little about winning the Grawemeyer award.

Shriver: At first I could not believe it.  Next I felt a bit of “survivor’s syndrome,” i.e. why me, when there are lots of other books that might well deserve such an award?  Then I began to feel a huge gratitude that a retired teacher and scholar like me would get such an award, towards the end of his career.  And finally I had to rejoice that, because of Grawemeyer, the ideas in this book might be pondered by more readers than might otherwise read it.  And, in addition, given the current recession-drain on the resources we have to live on in retirement, the monetary award could not have been more timely!

Author: Alexis O’Neill (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Laura Huliska-Beith (on JOMB)
Published: 2008 Scholastic (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0545010233

Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Sunny school-yard action, frisky text and heaps of humorous details propel us through bliss, boastfulness, betrayal and back again in this spirited tale of friendship lost and found.

Other books mentioned:

• The Recess Queen

HOTLINE VOICES: An unidentified JOMB listener/author/illustrator recommends Kiss Good Night (by Amy Hest) and Dig Dig Digging (by Margaret Mayo and Alex Ayliffe).

We’d love to hear your thoughts on a favourite children’s book. Leave us a voice message on our JOMB listener hotline, +1-206-350-6487.

To those of you celebrating Yom Kippur, G’mar Chatimah Tovah.