All posts tagged: author essay

Mom and Speech-language pathologist talks about how you can make the most of the morning routine with your kids, speech devlopment, more

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By Leslie Lindsay  Super-cute board book for use with toddlers in a home or clinic setting to help with early language development, plus kids will delight in the lift-the-flap feature. ~Books on Monday, Part 2|Always with a Book~ Last week, we chatted with Dr. T. about her hands-on, practical, and FUN board book for kids–and their caregivers to read and manipulate. Today, she presents some fab ways to use your morning routine to increase your child’s language skills. I love these ideas because they are accessible, plus children will delight in collaborating with you. The key here is to make it feel natural, as if it’s part of your normal day-to-day routine, not a ‘sit and learn’ or another ‘chore’ on your to-do list. Kids are smart, they pick up on this stuff. Best to ‘sneak it in’ in a way that makes it feel like fun and play.  5 ways to use your morning routine to increase your toddler’s language skills by Tinita Kearney, Ph.D., CCC-SLP As a wife, mother of two children under …

A mesmerizing tale that reads almost like a lucid dream, Ursula Hegi’s THE PATRON SAINT OF PREGNANT GIRLS is about the cacophony of grief, a freak accident, wanderlust, and so much more; plus an excerpt from her NER essay on craft

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By Leslie Lindsay  Three mothers, one circus, a one-hundred-year wave, a drowned town, coupled with grief, parenting, and the ways women hold each other up through challenging times. ~WEDNESDAYS WITH WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ It’s the summer of 1878 and the Ludwig Zirkus has come to the island of Nordstrand in Germany. Big-bellied girls from the nearby St. Margaret’s Home for Pregnant Girls are thrilled to see the parade and the show as are the Sisters who care for them, so begins THE PATRON SAINT OF PREGNANT GIRLS by Ursula Hegi (forthcoming from Flatiron Books, August 18 2020). Lotte and her husband, Kalle, a toymaker are near the ocean when a one-hundred-year-wave roars from the Nordsee and claims the lives of three of their young children. Lotte is holding Wilhelm, the baby, and he is spared. Yet, Lotte and Kalle, childhood sweethearts are bereft with grief. On the beach that day are three mothers: Lotte, whose children are gone except Wilhelm, Tilli, an 11-year old girl who just gave birth at the home and had her baby adopted, …

Inspired by a time of isolation & distance from her family, prolific and award-winning author Sebnem Isiguzel pens a story of about coming of age during a violent political unrest in THE GIRL IN THE TREE

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By Leslie Lindsay  A young woman climbs the tallest tree in Instanbul’s centuries-old Gulahane Park, determined to live out the rest of her days there, what follows is her story.  ~WEDNESDAYS WITH WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ Şebnem İşigüzel is a prolific and much-lauded writer in her native Turkey, and with publication of THE GIRL IN THE TREE (Amazon, April 17 2020), American readers will discover a fresh, memorable, and extraordinary voice in contemporary literature. Amnesty International’s website describes the Gezi Park protests this way: “On 30 May 2013, police cleared Gezi Park in central Istanbul of a small group of protestors opposed to its destruction. The denial of their right to protest and the violence used by the police touched a nerve and a wave of anti-government demonstrations swept across Turkey.”  What really happened in Gezi in 2013? In Şebnem İşigüzel’s THE GIRL IN THE TREEthe author gives voice to that world in a powerful debut about a girl’s coming of age amid violent unrest and her unexpected escape. Perched in an abandoned stork’s nest in a sanctuary …

Ever feel like hanging up your ‘supermom’ cape, shuttering the house and moving the family to India and Nepal? That’s what Dena Moes did in THE BUDDHA SAT RIGHT HERE

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By Leslie Lindsay  Family, adventure, connections, and generosity abound in Dena Moes’s THE BUDDHA SAT RIGHT HERE, an American family’s travel odyssey to India and New Delhi. GOLD AWARD for Travel/Essay from the Independent Publisher Book Awards! I’ll admit it: I’ve often thought about selling the house, pulling the kids out of school, and high-tailing it to…where? I don’t know, exactly. Ireland? The Tuscan hills of Italy? Some bucolic mountain meadow in Switzerland? Any of those places would do. Maybe someplace more remote, more gritty. But would I? Really? Dena Moes does. She and her husband and two daughters head for India and Nepal, where they have a spiritual awakening, see a better way of living their life…it will challenge your parenting and how you look at the world. And her luminous new memoir, THE BUDDHA SAT RIGHT HERE (SWP, April 5 2019) delves right into this. “Prepare to be Inspired! The Buddha Sat Right Here will open your heart, crack you up, and maybe even change all the ways you engage in parenting, adventure, and spiritual …

A Mother’s Love, a Teacher’s Promise, living life with a full heart: Internationally bestselling author Alyson Richman shares this essay on THE SECRETS OF CLOUDS

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By Leslie Lindsay From the #1 internationally bestselling author of THE LOST WIFE and THE VELVET HOURS comes an emotionally charged story about a mother’s love, a teacher’s journey, and a child’s heart….. In recent months, I’ve stumbled upon antique stores with a greater curiosity for nostalgia of my childhood.  Almost invariably, I’ve unearthed toys or household goods that were once a part of my childhood. The Barbie Mercedes! A set of Smuf glassware from a restaurant chain! An early edition of Hungry, Hungry Hippos, the same type of cannisters that once adorned my childhood kitchen counters…and I think: these are antiques?! I remember the 1980s with a brilliant, almost photographic memory. So when THE SECRET OF CLOUDS (Berkley hardcover, Feb 19 2019) came to my attention, I was completely intrigued. THE SECRET OF CLOUDS is internationally bestselling author Alyson Richman’s first depiction of a more contemporary era–1986, but it also combines pertinent topics of immigration, education, a parent’s love, a teacher’s dedication. Richman is known for her sweeping WWII tales of WWII, like THE VELVET HOURS, …

What if you felt trapped by your past–and needed permission to breathe? Jaclyn Gilbert tackles this & more in her debut fiction, LATE AIR

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By Leslie Lindsay  In this piercing, lyrically compelling debut novel, Jaclyn Gilbert tackles marriage, loss, and finding one’s way home.  In the shadows of a predawn run, Murray tries to escape what he can’t control: His failed marriage. Grief. Even his own weakness. Murray is a college running coach insistent on his relentless training regimen and obsessed with his star athlete, until he finds her crumpled and unresponsive during a routine practice one morning. Unable to avoid or outrun reality, Murray is forced to face the consequences of his own increasingly tenuous grip on life—exacerbated by the dangers of his perfectionistic, singular focus as a former athlete and survivor of an unspeakable loss from his past. Weaving together the strands of two lives that form a union, Jaclyn pieces together  alternating narratives–Murray and his wife, Nancy, as we experience their early moments of hope and desire as well as their fears and failings. There’s time and trauma, grief, and ultimately healing. I asked Jaclyn a bit about her process, how she discovered the story and …

Write On, Wednesday: Author of REAL EMOTIONAL GIRL Tanya Chernov Talks About Home (Series 4/5)

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By Leslie Lindsay Having recently read Tanya Chernov’s memoir A REAL EMOTIONAL GIRL, I reached out to extend my kudos on her moving account. It’s relatable to many–loss, grief, and ulimately a place of home.  Her family camp for girls “up north” will always represent comfort, safety, and love for her. What Gathers Beneath the Surface “Though I was born in Milwaukee, I spent much of my childhood at the summer camp my family owns and operates in northwestern Wisconsin. “Up North,” where the mosquitoes are said to grow as big as hummingbirds, and the nearest town has perplexingly sustained a population of 521 souls, the region harbors a blissfully stagnant kind of atmosphere. A quiet exists there you can’t find elsewhere in the world, a quiet you haven’t heard since 1985. Maybe even ’82. There’s a spit of swampland between the butt of our lake and curve of County Road I, where—even that far from our boundaries—you can hear the laughter and cheering of the campers issuing a steady susurrus from down the road. I like to paddle my solo canoe out …