Book Review: On Skein of Death (murder mystery, knitting)

On Skein of Death, a Riverbank Knitting Mystery Book*, by Allie Pleiter (Berkley Prime Crime, 2021, 295 pp, $7.99 pb) Reviewed by Skye Anderson. 

Just in time for the 50th annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival,** the first three books in the Riverbank Knitting Mystery Book series - set in Maryland - arrived in the mail and I couldn't wait to wade through them once I saw the dog, Hank, on the cover of the first one, On Skein of Death. And on the second one. And on the third one!

Although written by a Chicagoan, the book gets Maryland right (though there is not much to get right, being a small town) and knitting right, too, though the latter part (knitting) is more than I know!

In the quaint little old Maryland town of Collinstown (imaginary) on the also-imaginary Chester River, our heroine Libby opens a yarn store, Y.A.R.N., when she returns to her hometown as a 38-year old divorcee. She invites customers to write sayings on her blackboard that explain the name (acronym) of the store: You're Absolutely Ready Now, You'll Always Remember Nice, Your Anger Rewards No one, etc.

Like all yarn stores, Y.A.R.N. is comfortable, cozy and colorful - as are the characters, prime among them being Mayor Gavin, Libby's highschool sweetheart and now the divorced father of a 13-year-old girl.

But I Digress - Back to Murder.

With the featured guest speaker of a yarn festival weekend, knit designer Perle Lonager arriving for the workshops and quickly disappearing only to submerge dead, strangled by red yarn, our heroine must salvage her weekend business losses and solve the who-dun-it. Of course this is little town life, where the police let civilians help with the solution.

And, with three prime suspects, the suspense mounts.

Added Bonus (or should I say, Bone-us?!)

Author Allie Pleiter (speaker, author, coach) includes the instructions for a dog sweater with a Nordic design! (Wish she had included a photo) I'd also like to see more of Hank the dog.

In addition, there is plenty of yarn-bombing!

We hope the Riverbank in The Riverbank Knitting Murder series comes into play more in future books and it just might since Collinstown is on the Chester River.

*First in the series. Book 2 is Knit or Dye Trying,

Book 3 is It Came Upon a Midnight Shear.

A signed copy of each will be given away at the 50th Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on 6-7 May 2023 and the author will be signing more books  in 2024.

**Three autographed Allie Pleiter books to be given away at the 50th annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, 6-7 May 2023 at the Howard County Fairgrounds.

Book Review: The S.O.U.R.C.E. (OT) (children, ocean pollution, exciting story)

The S.O.U.R.C.E., by Suzanna Royse (Fulton Books, 2021, 209 pp, 2nd edition, $18.95, ages 8-12)

The Plot

Two skateboard kid champions who live next to the ocean get too close and are dragged down by a riptide.

Flash forward to Ocean World, a humungous "ocean aquarium" and tourist spot that also heals injured ocean animals with the goal of returning them to their oceanic habitat. However, here we also have the mad scientists who use technology for their own purposes.

Whales and Sea Otters

Some of the ocean mammals at Ocean World long for the families they were taken from, in order to wow the visiting humans, so they hatch a plan of escape and carry it out but they run into danger along the way and also run into the kids. 

Can the kids save the escaped animals? Can the kids themselves be saved? What is the danger that faces the ocean mammals? Is it true that the future of the world is in the hands of today's children and that they can change the world for the better, even now, as young as they are? How does one know whom to trust? And can animals really talk? Does the mother of all sea creatures really exist? And what is the significance of S.O.U.R.C.E.?

Bonus: Just enough illustrations so the reader can race through this book. An illustrated glossary in the back.

Book Review: I am Andi (three adopted kids in a normal 'fighting' family)(children's book)

 I am Andi, by JR Balthazar (Ruby Red, 2022, 210 pp, $21.99, children's book)

More Andi books, please!

Boys and girls alike will want to read this book in one sitting! Author JR Balthazar remembers what it's like to be adopted and 11 and fight with your also-adopted brothers (but defend them again others), and be embarrassed by them and suffer the consequences of bullying and go to sleep-over camp and have two BFFs.

And the Puppy!

Your brother wants a border collie but gets a lab puppy for his birthday so he gives it to you but the birthday party is crashed by the new bratty kids down the street who attach balloons to the puppy and . . . . 

Balthazar writes almost in one long sentence. Nothing unusual happens in this family but you read it faster and faster because you can identify with Andi whether you are a girl in the middle or a boy. Her older brother keeps getting kicked out of schools (ADHD) and her younger brother is on the spectrum. Her dad is in the military and that makes just your ordinary average American family. 

I am Andi reads like a letter from your mom when you are away - full of ordinary everyday occurrences that read like home because they take you home again, even if the situations are different.

Glossaries Help

At the end of the book is a page of shortcuts for those who don't text much (LOL, WTH, TBC, etc.) to translate the last word of each chapter and one or two inside each as well (not too many). Next to that glossary is a page of simple diagrams (Andrika symbols) which also start each chapter instead of a chapter title (though it took this reviewer five chapters to make the connection) which foretells that chapter's situation.

We need more Andi books!

Book Review: What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? (OT)(hysterical historical non-fiction)

What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?  by Jean Fritz (Newbery Honor Award winning author) (Puffin Books, 48 pp, ages 7-9, grades 2-4, 1996, $6.99) Reviewed by Skye Anderson.

Did you know Ben Franklin was one of 10 boys and 5 girls? You do, now, and you will remember it and more fun facts about Ben, mostly before he became famous.

Making History Fun and Funny

What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? may just be the most fun you have ever had learning history or anything else. You will learn that, "back in the day," the first-born son in the Franklin family always became a blacksmith while the next was trained in the occupation of his father, that apprenticeships last nine years even if you learn faster than that. Ben was apprenticed to a brother who was a printer and started writing poetry of all things but was told he'd best stick to prose (as in the Constitution). He then ran away to sea and ended up in Philadelphia to start his own printing business. And so it begins.

Franklin was curious. So curious that he invented things, one of which locked his door when he was in bed so he didn't have to get up to do that chore. We all know he played with electricity, had numerous children of his own, helped found the Union, and went abroad to England and then France as ambassador.

But the story of it all may just keep you in stitches. You will want to read the other history books author Jean Fritz has written, too, just as fast as you can - the titles are worth it!*

Can't You Make Them Behave, King George?

Shh, We're Writing the Constitution

And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?

Where do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus?

Why Don't You Get a Horse, Sam Adams?

Will You Sign Here, John Hancock?

Book Review: Maria and the Magic of the Rainbow (OT)(Even bullies can change)

Maria and the Magic of the Rainbow, by Suzanna Royse (Fulton Books, 126 pp, 2022, $15.95, ages 5-9) Reviewed by Skye Anderson.

Maria and the Magic of the Rainbow starts out with a pictorial glossary of the major characters - all 30 of them, drawn on eight pages. So, right now you are probably wondering what does that mean for the book?

For Girls and Boys

With a girl butterfly with only one wing, and so many characters, most of them bugs, this book is sure to entertain both girls and boys: Maria for the girls and all the bugs for the boys (and girls). 

Maria has a beautiful voice and is the employee (slave?) of a mean old bad guy, but friends help her to escape and then she gets to go to school. But just like some schools for humans, this school is where our Maria meets bullies. What the bullies do and how Maria and friends react make a meaningful story for youngsters and, even better, the bugs are written true-to-life. For example, author Suzanna Royse tells us the red ants can't swim across the river so our heroes are safe. True fact. 

Kids who love bugs will soon learn all the bugs' names and kids who don't like bugs will probably change their mind as bad bugs somehow become good bugs. We would have liked cuter bugs, however.

What's in a Name?

We loved the names: Rumble and Stinger and Twig. Flicker and Blinker the fireflies, Radar the bat and even Spitz the snake.

And, The Rainbow?

One has to read the entire book before the significance of the title is revealed but then it is so lovely and obvious that kids will be able to transfer the lessons of this story to their own lives or that of other kids they know.

Book Review: The Sable Arm: Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861 - 1865 (OT)

The Sable Arm: Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861 - 1865, by Dudley Taylor Cornish (University Press of Kansas, 342 pp, 1987/1956)

They had to fight for the right to fight.

Hailed as one of the top one hundred books on the Civil War, The Sable Arm is a comprehensive history of accepting slaves* (and black freemen) into the Union Army, nearly 200,000 of them! The former slaves were a particular asset when the Army fought in the South, for they knew the land and could tolerate the heat.

President Lincoln was slow to accept and late to pay these new soldiers. He tapdanced for a long time, possibly believing, like many other Northerners that Blacks were not disciplined enough to trust with a rifle - they were so wrong! The Blacks proved their mettle. They were first used as cooks and in construction and loading box cars but soon some were sent to a leadership school which became the precursor of OCS (Officer Candidate School today).

The Sable Arm was selected for my veterans' book club and since one member's hobby is the Civil War while another majored in history, they particularly loved the book and added their own stories from other sources. As it was, I was the token female (with eight males) for the discussion and, being raised in the West, still get the Civil War and the Revolutionary War mixed up (I also have never taken a history course except in high school where we studied Washington State History rather than Maryland State History.)

Essentially this is a long report, replete with many many quotes, rather than a fascinating story well told: it reads like a dissertation and mentions units from Kansas in several places: the publisher is the University Press of Kansas.

*usually referred to as Negroes and sometimes as Colored. After all, this book was written in 1956 and contained many quotes from even earlier.

Book Review: The Wild Rose (OT)(magical mythical mystical real horse sagas of New Mexico)

The Wild Rose: Stories of My Horses, Volume II, by Martin Prechtel (North Star Press of St. Cloud, 2022, 412 pp, $21.49)

The prolific author Martin Prechtel has just published the second in a series of three spiritual anecdotes-in-a-book (the first is The Mare and the Mouse*) about 'his' horses in the wilds of New Mexico.

The Wild Rose reminds me of a 'book' my mother put together for our family and friends about a trip we took when I was about seven years old. Rose is a family tale about horses found and  'owned' and respected - and loved. 

Illustrations

The illustrations are elementary yet detailed and speak of what is to come in each chapter - detailed enough to spur the reader on to peruse them with an eye toward figuring out the story told in that chapter before reading it and then seeing how close you came to it in the end.

This experienced writer tells tales of Indian lore, whether true or not, and has a deeply profound love and respect for horses that shines through nearly every page. One can learn a lot of environmental philosophy in The Wild Rose and even perhaps change a jaded mind into one who respects and seeks to save the wild horse of the American West.

The Saga

Prechtel searches for some horses of his youth and writes about them in epic proportions - almost mythical and magical. His love for the land is also mystical. A very unusual book, one of many by the same author.

*