A few years ago I wrote a book called A Parent’s Guide to the Best Children’s Literature.  As it happens, the publisher was a schmendrick who ran off with everyone’s money.  I won’t tell you his name, because that would be indiscreet (Ed Steussy).   He also managed to retain the rights my work and, to add insult to injury, I later learned that he’s a Republican.  The whole ordeal might have caused me to lose a lot of sleep, but my son, newly born at the time, beat him to it.  Since then, I’ve been reviewing children’s books for various publications and beginning to collect ideas for a new volume.   I also had a second child, lost my gallbladder, began working as a book publicist at Penn Press, gained weight, developed a passion for hot yoga, lost a few pounds, fumed about the war, read a lotta books, worked on a couple of manuscripts, made some wonderful new friends, and realized that I should never have left Narberth.

 Anyhoo, I’ve decided to begin posting some brief children’s book reviews here.  Some have been published elsewhere, as noted.  This is in anticipation of what comes next, but I wanted to, at the very least, recognize some of the more spectacular kids’ books that I’ve seen of late.

I get a lot of spam here, as you might imagine.  The title of a recent unsolicited post said, ”Tracy Told Me To Tell You.”  I was alarmed, as Tracy was the name of a dear, dear friend who passed away several years ago.  Her mark was indelible, to say the least.  Alas, the post led to a site that sold fetish objects that, well, might make your granny faint (unless, of course, she’s into that.  No harm done.)  My Tracy would have feigned horror while  finding it totally hilarious.   Actually, maybe the post really was from her and she’s off somewhere having a good chortle.