Book Your Stocking 2023 with Tom Noyes

Book Your Stocking 2023 features readers sharing children's books from their past or present. Perhaps you'll stumble upon forgotten books or titles you somehow missed. Should a book find its way into a stocking near you, all the better.

Please welcome Tom Noyes from Erie, Pennsylvania.

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The Hidden Stories

by Tom Noyes

I remember liking Richard Scarry books very much as a tike. Books like What Do People Do All Day? and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go didn't offer much in terms of plot, but the charmingly absurd and busy illustrations--Is that rabbit driving an alligator?--offered lots of raw material for me to use to tell myself stories. While large-ish animals like hippos, pigs, cats, bears, and foxes got the starring roles in Scarry's illustrations, my favorite characters were GoldBug and Lowly Worm, recurring minor players who made miniature, half-hidden spectacles of themselves on the perimeters of the books' pages. To this day, I still find myself interested in these kinds of peripheral characters, suspecting that the most compelling stories might not always be the most obvious ones. 

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About Tom Noyes: Noyes is the author of three story collections Behold Faith and Other Stories, Spooky Action at a Distance, and Come By Here as well as the novel Substance of Things Hoped For. He teaches at Penn State in the Behrand College. Write website here: https://tomnoyes.org/

Tom Noyes

Book Your Stocking 2023 with Marilynn Strasser Olson

On this year's Book Your Stocking, readers are sharing children's books from their past or present. Perhaps you'll stumble upon a book you once loved or a title you somehow missed. Should a book find its way into a stocking near you, all the better.

Please welcome my friend and cherished teacher, retired Professor of Medieval Studies and Children's Literature, Marilynn Strasser Olson.

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One Way to Shelve a Magical Book

by Marilynn Olson

I was accosted on a bus by a handsome stranger once, who said “You read a lot of Edward Eager as a child, didn’t you?” – which is the most solid proof that I have that reading Edward Eager as a child had a permanent effect.  I’m pretty sure it did.  I would have told anyone that Half Magic was my favorite book. I got it in the summer when I was 8 from the Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club.  

The cover scared me (I have heard one other testimony to this – neither of us is sure why), so I always put it back in the same place in my bookshelf with the cover against the right-side edge so I could find it but wouldn’t be taken unawares.  

I loved the Bodecker illustrations, which have exactly the right tone.  I loved this one because it is very funny, but also (I think) because it revealed some adult vulnerabilities that had not occurred to me yet.  

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About Marilynn Strasser Olson: Dr. Olson recently retired from Texas State University where she taught an array of courses over a number of years in both the undergraduate and graduate English literature programs. She's author of innumerable essays, lectures, and presentations as well as the books Children's Culture and the Avante Garde: Painting in Paris 1890-1915 (2013); Ellen Raskin in the Twayne's United States Author Series (1991). She's fabulous.

Marilynn Strasser Olson

Book Your Stocking 2023 with John Kenny

On this year's Book Your Stocking, readers are sharing children's books from their past or present. Perhaps you'll stumble upon readers who read the same books as you, or will remember books important to your own childhood. Should the book find its way into a stocking near you, all the better.

Please welcome writer, editor, and teacher John Kenny from Dublin, Ireland.

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Through the Reading Glass as an Adult

by John Kenny

My main obsession as a child was with comics. My 'education' at a Christian Brothers school here in Dublin, Ireland turned me off books, so it was only as an adult that I started to dip my toes into the world of literature. I've since read a number of children's classics, several of which I loved: Peter Pan, Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. 

Perhaps it's an obvious choice, but my absolute favourites have to be the two Alice in Wonderland books. As a parent, I had the privilege of reading to my two daughters. They would sit on each side of me on the bed and I would read the next chapter of whatever book they had picked before they went to sleep for the night. It was a magical few years, a total delight for me. 

I think one of their favourites, and mine, was the Spiderwick Chronicles, which we all loved. It was a bittersweet moment when they got a little older and finally said to me, 'It's okay, Dad, we can read on our own now.'

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About John Kenny: John is an avid reader, writer, and for many years served as editor of the Dublin science-fiction and fantasy magazine Albedo One. He teaches writing workshops in Dublin and writes about books and more at his website https://johnrichardkenny.com/

John Kenny, Writer

Book Your Stocking 2023 with Julia Drescher

On this year's Book Your Stocking, readers are sharing children's books from their past or present. Perhaps you'll stumble upon books you remember reading or somehow missed. Should the book find its way into a stocking near you, all the better.

Please welcome today's avid reader, Julia Drescher.

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Both a Dress and Not a Dress

by Julia Drescher

My favorite book in elementary school was The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. When I was a kid, I suppose I was attracted to books that were sad with a tinge of a small, lonely triumph. I loved the fact that the main character did not have 100 dresses & very much did have 100 dresses, & I loved that they were an art project & not the "actual" things that would've helped her socially. Later, when I was made to go to church, I think this book led me to sit in the pew with a small spiral notebook & design/illustrate lots of fashion garments for the Virgin Mary statue at the front of the church. It was a lovely way to spend the time.

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About Julia Drescher: Julia is a poet, writer, editor, and librarian living in Colorado. Learn about her projects here: 

http://www.furtherotherbookworks.com

http://deletepress.org/julia-drescher/

Book Your Stocking 2023 with Meredith Lombardi

This year on the holiday series Book Your Stocking, readers are sharing children's books from their past or present. Perhaps you'll stumble upon forgotten books or discover a title you somehow missed. Should the book find its way into a stocking near you, all the better.

Today's reader is Meredith Lombardi of Spokane, Washington.

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What the Sisters Predicted

by Meredith Lombardi

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a book that I read in childhood that has left a lasting impression. I think it still stands out to me because I was a young girl when I read the book, and the author portrayed the sisters as such unique women. They all had dreams, struggles and responsibilities but were ultimately respected as individuals. They demonstrated empathy, sacrifice and patience but still found their way. I think it made me feel like life wasn’t always going to be perfect but that I could be myself and still figure it out.

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About Meredith Lombardi: Meredith is the owner and director of Spokane Montessori North, Preschool and Kindergarten. In her spare time, she travels, teaches yoga, walks her dogs, hikes, reads, and enjoys her family. 

Meredith the morning before hiking
into the Grand Canyon

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (December 17, 2023)

It wasn't until I typed out December 17 that I realized how far into this month we've come. Thanks for bringing your coffee today to listen to good poems by other people. Today's reading is for my good friend Steve Parker who is home in bed when he'd rather be in the mountains.

Poems:

• The Plan by Wendell Berry (from his book The Peace of Wild Things)

• Hiking with the Old Acorn Lady by J.W. Rivers (1988)

• Mason Jars by the Window by Alberto Rios (1988)

• Last Hike Before Leaving Montana by Patricia Traxler (from her book Naming the Fires, 2015)

• Grace by Wendell Berry (1967)

• The Hike by Neil Weiss (1955)

• The Burial of the Old by Wendell Berry (1967)

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🠊 More Wake to Words here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Book Your Stocking 2023 with My Mom

On this year's Book Your Stocking, readers share children's books from their past or present. Perhaps you'll stumble upon readers who loved the same books as you, or you'll recall books  important to your own childhood. Should the book find its way into a stocking near you, all the better.

I'm pleased to welcome my mother to the series who begins by remembering her own mother.

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From Listening to Reading Aloud

by Carol Pringle

Mother read to us The Bobsey Twins series. Then, I read a lot of forgettable library books as a child and owned only one book (dog vs. cat) until ordering a Scholastic romance book as a high-school freshman. So, I wasn’t an avid reader until I became a teacher who read to children. My all-time fave is E.B. White's Charlotte’s Web. Loved his Trumpet of the Swan, too, and Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest books. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren was one my third graders enjoyed hearing. Others liked Little House on the Prairie; Old Yeller also comes to mind. 

My 2024 reading list is going to contain mostly children’s book titles. This week, I’m reading all of Kate Dicamillo’s books (Because of Winn Dixie, et al).

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My mom reading to my son

About Carol Pringle: Carol taught elementary school for over thirty years after a stint in social work. She grew up in Evansville, Indiana between her older sister Judy and her younger brother Gary--a sibling position to which she attributes many of her personality traits, faults, and desires. She is now retired, volunteers at the local library, and is an active member of her church community.

Book Discussion with Erin Pringle on Rendezvous with a Writer OutWest

Last night, I met up virtually with Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell for a discussion about my newest book Unexpected Weather Events. I met Bobbi Jean several years ago when she co-hosted a different book show entitled The Writer's Block. Thankfully, she continued a writer-interview radio show and podcast even after the death of her co-host, the wonderful Jim Christina. 

This is my third time talking with Bobbi Jean, and for good reason--she is SO easy to talk to, thoroughly reads the work, and it really feels like a conversation and never a template. I wish I wrote faster so that I could know the next time we get to talk at length about writing. Luckily, Bobbi Jean and her husband Jim interview a writer every Thursday, so you can tune in live or listen/watch recorded shows.

If you missed our recent conversation on L.A. Talk Radio, you can view the show via YouTube (below) or on the L.A. Talk Radio website. 

An audio-only version is also available here: https://www.latalkradio.com/content/rendezvous-121423%20#audio_play

 

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