Reviews

La – short for Lavender – must deal with a broken heart and World War II in a quiet Suffolk village. She quickly realizes she needs more to do than gardening and helping to care for a neighbor’s chickens. Believing that music is soothing to the soul, La forms an orchestra, made up of local residents and military personnel from a nearby base.

Three recent titles illuminate issues affecting Midwestern culture and small town life:

This Canadian television series is a wonderful saga of a young family during the Great Depression. There are characters of all ages so your entire family will enjoy it. I just happened across it in the library one day. After watching the first show I was hooked and watched all five seasons.

I heard Piper Kerman talking about her new book on NPR’s Fresh Air one afternoon. I was very interested and wanted to learn more about her experience serving time in a U.S. federal women’s prison. She highlights the federal prison system's failure to offer rehabilitation opportunities for female prisoners and the judicial system's attitude toward drug offenders.

Adriana Trigiani is an award winning author of popular romantic fiction. This book introduces us to the life of Italian-American Valentine Roncalli. Valentine is a beautiful single woman, who recently inherited a successful shoe business and fell in love with an Italian man.

This historical fiction takes us to Honolulu of the early 1900s, the era of early Chinese, Japanese and Korean settlers arriving in Oahu. The women arrive as "picture" brides, and the men come to work on the sugar plantations.

In this sequel to Wings, author Aprilynne Pike further leads you into the world of Avalon and the life of its fairies.

There are many things we practice for: a test, an interview, a sports event. In the early and middle part of last century women sometimes practiced being a mother. There were home economic programs at some colleges that offered female students the opportunity to learn about motherhood firsthand. Orphaned babies were loaned to the program for a year or two in order for the student, or practice, mothers to learn about taking care of a real baby.

Daniel Pinkwater has been one of my favorite authors since I was a kid. Just because I've gotten older doesn't mean I've grown out of Pinkwater's children's books, which is good, because I'm not sure Pinkwater has really grown up either.