The Poet's Dog by Patricia MacLachlan.

 The Poet's Dog by Patricia MacLachlan. Katherine Tegen Books (an imprint of HarperCollins, 2016. Children's chapter book.


When dogs speak, only poets and children can hear according to MacLachlan. In this poignant tale, a dog, Teddy, rescues two children from the snow. The dog has been carefully taught by his master, Sylvan, a poet, and can communicate. In the thirteen short chapters (only 88 pages in the book), readers learn about Sylvan and Teddy's lives as well as about Flora and Nickel, the children. Love, loss, friendship and the impact of simple things are woven into the sparse, but beautifully worded, text. If you love dogs, words, children, and great writing, just read this magical story.

The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies.

 The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies. Crown (Penguin Random House), 2016. Adult fiction.


With lush descriptions of the beautiful landscapes and many details about the tea business, Jefferies has created a glimpse into a fascinating bygone culture. Gwen, a young English woman, marries Laurence Hooper, a wealthy owner of a tea plantation in Ceylon and goes home with him. Ultimately, she discovers his first wife, Caroline, has died several years before. While this could have been just another Rebecca remake, Jefferies has created fresh characters and a very different story. Gwen's sister-in-law, Verity, is a troubled and manipulative woman. Her cousin, Fran, is often far away. And, then there's an unusual pregnancy. The book reads smoothly and lovers of historical fiction won't put this one down for long.(Starred review in Booklist)


I receive this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.

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Before the Fall: A Novel by Noah Hawley

  Before the Fall: A Novel by Noah Hawley. Grand Central Publishing (Hachette), 2016. Adult fiction.


From the title itself, readers can tell that there's a crash coming. Sure enough, a small private plane takes off from Nantucket and disappears before it reaches New York City.  A family of four, a high profile couple, two pilots and a flight attendant, and an artist are on board. Who survives? What happened?  The author does a good job of keeping the tension going, the intrigue convoluted, and the characters real. Hawley is best known for script writing, and both producing and writing the hit series BONES. No doubt Before the Fall will be one thriller of a movie!  (For some fun reading, pair this one with the very different, but somewhat related After the Crash by Bussi.)

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando. Bloomsbury, 2016. Young Adult. Fiction.

It's been eleven years since six kindergarteners went missing. Suddenly, five of them return, but with no memories of what has happened to them in those years. Someone  finds he knows how to load a gun. Someone remembers a carousel horse. Someone can use a camera well. What happened to these kids and why have they come back now? Do they just start high school now? And, the biggest mystery for one family: where is the sixth child? What makes a person real if there are few memories stored up?  Told in a series of fifteen days after they appear, readers learn of the families and their struggles to both remember and forget, to move on and live their lives. It's a mysterious, twisting tale of friends, families, trying to remember the past and trying find a future in a landscape of "What ifs".

We Could Be Beautiful: A Novel

 We Could Be Beautiful: A Novel by Swan Huntley.

                                             Doubleday, 2016. Adult fiction.


Reading this book is like eating a beautiful chocolate éclair. It's gorgeous and it tastes good, but you wonder if it's really worth all the calories!


Catherine West is almost too good to be true: beautiful, wealthy, successful in Manhattan. Her big flaw seems to be that she has not found the right man with whom to share a family. (WHAT??) Then, she meets William Stockton who has to be too good to be true: handsome, wealthy, successful (Get the trend here?) and who vows to love Catherine forever and they plan to marry. But, wait, he has known Catherine's family in the past and remembers intimate details of both her parents and her sister, Caroline, and Catherine as a child. Catherine's mother is now living with Alzheimer's and has flashes of distinctly not liking William. Something is wrong here, but readers will keep going to find out just what it is. Gorgeous details of life in the fast lane and reads smoothly, but is it worth the time? If you want a tale of deception, greed, love, and family, put this one in your beach bag.

Natural Color by Sasha Duerr

 Natural Color: Vibrant Plant Dye Projects for Your Home and Wardrobe by Sasha Duerr. Photography by Aya Brackett. Watson-Guptill Publications, 2016. Nonfiction.


     Both a coffee table book and a textbook, this gorgeous work will enhance the work of all home textile creators. Projects include useful items like table runners, pillowcases, curtains, hats, napkins, mittens and such. Arranged by the seasons, the projects and many plants are beautifully illustrated in full color, full page illustrations. The book is filled with information about dyeing, mordants, common plants that yield unexpectedly beautiful colors. A bibliography, index, and glossary are helpful additions. Duerr has great passion for her topic and writes in a clear manner. I received this book from  Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.

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Falling: A Daughter, A Father, and a Journey Back by Elisha Cooper

 Falling:  A Daughter, A Father, and a Journey Back by Elisha Cooper.  Pantheon Books (Penguin Random House), 2016. Memoir.


I have known the gorgeous work of Elisha Cooper for some years now. His illustrated picture books for children, Farm, Beach, and Train are masterpieces about their respective topics. Full of colorful details, they seem the work of a careful, but happy, person. His prior memoir, Crawling: A Father's First Year is full of happy new fatherhood and the wonder of being a parent and describing the uncertainty of who really learns more during that time, the baby or the parent. A Year in New York is a thick, but small book full of intrigues in the city. The man can both write AND illustrate.


This 2016 book, however, brings new depth to Elisha Cooper's work. While he is holding his four-year-old daughter at a baseball game at Wrigley Field, he notices a small bump under her ribs. It turns out to be a pediatric kidney cancer called Wilms' tumor. Imagine: one day the sky is blue, your child is healthy and the next moment you have a child with cancer. The bottom has literally fallen out, but you must go on. That is the journey that Cooper takes readers on for the next three years of the family's lives.


This sounds like such an awful topic. It sounds like a depressing topic. It sounds like a terrible topic for a book. But, Cooper's writing is eloquent and upbeat while realistic and joyful. He runs the gamut of emotions and continues to love both his daughters and his wife and write other books that show none of this (or maybe they do, but it's so subtle that most readers miss it...I can't wait to reread his whole body of work).


The little family moves back to New York City as they had planned. The descriptions will make readers think they could live there, too. Cooper tells of his high school and college days when he played football. He tells of surviving minefields in the Golan Heights. Nothing is as tough as knowing his child has cancer. Yet, he describes the wonders of working with wood. The family's trip to Florence, Italy makes us long to go there. There is happiness and joy in their daily lives. But, always, there are trips to the hospital for tests and Dr. Lee, who comes off like the doctor we would all want in the lives of our children. Ultimately, and finally, the three year tests are all fine. The cancer is gone.


Can anyone learn to live with cancer? Can cancer be "cured"? Elisha Cooper gives new hope for resounding, positive answers to both. Here's to many more years of great health for him and his family and for many more of those wondrous picture books. I only hope to meet him at a library conference some day and give the man a hug. Better yet, to be in the audience when he accepts a Caldecott Medal one of these years!