Blog Archives
A Strange Sound
A Strange Sound, by Olive Green, follows Terry the toad, a berry delivery driver who keeps hearing mysterious noises along her route: howls, whistles, snores, strange little word-sounds, and finally a roar. Each time she stops to investigate, the world around her seems full of possibilities, but no clear answer. The surprise, tucked among the berries in her trailer, is a small black puppy who has been riding along unnoticed. What begins as a playful sound-hunt turns into a gentle adoption story, with Terry naming the puppy Mazzy and realizing, almost at once, that she’s found someone to love.
The writing is sweet in a way that feels deliberately old-fashioned, with its rhymes, repeated phrases, and musical animal sounds. Some lines have a bouncy, bedtime-story charm, especially when Terry keeps deciding the noise “must be the wind,” even as the reader can feel something tender building underneath. I appreciated that the mystery never becomes too tense. Even the “scary” roar is softened by the warmth of Terry’s curiosity and concern.
The heart of this children’s book is its idea of unexpected belonging, and that’s what stayed with me most. Terry doesn’t need much explanation before her compassion takes over. She sees a little creature who is alone, small, and afraid, and her response is immediate and deeply emotional. That moment could have felt too sudden, but the artwork helps make it believable. Dainius Šukys fills the pages with odd, funny, lavish details: animals on scooters, clocks hanging from trees, a bear dodging bees, enormous berries, dreamy hills, and skies that shift from stormy drama to soft nighttime blue. The illustrations invite lingering. My child would absolutely stop me mid-page to point things out.
A Strange Sound is a tender, whimsical picture book with a big emotional center hiding inside a silly little mystery. I liked it most for its tenderness, its cozy strangeness, and the way it turns noise into connection. It is a lovely choice for children who enjoy animal stories, gentle suspense, rhyming read-alouds, and books about adoption, caregiving, or finding family in unexpected places.
Pages: 35 | ASIN : B0GMS1RRZJ
The Elementist
The Elementist is a fantasy novel with a strong romantic fantasy current running through it, but what stayed with me most was its feeling of old magic pressing up against a wounded world. At the center is Caedris, a mysterious young woman found wandering in the woods, marked by something no one fully understands and driven by the need to find what she has lost. Around her, Boyko builds a story of fae memory, ritual, longing, and restoration, with Ferrid the Lorekeeper and Jocco the steady farm lad becoming two of the book’s emotional anchors as Caedris moves toward a role that is much larger and more costly than it first appears. By the end, the novel opens out into sacrifice, return, and the healing of a break between realms.
This book does not rush to explain itself. It wants me to listen first. The prose is full of song, stone, weather, breath, ritual. Sometimes it feels almost sung rather than spoken, which suits a story so tied to voice, memory, and the living world. That can be lovely. There were stretches where I felt more submerged than guided, and I had to trust the book to carry me. Mostly, it did. When Boyko is at her best, the language has a hush to it, like standing in a forest and realizing the whole place is awake and paying attention.
The idea of “gifting” instead of usefulness gives the novel a moral center that feels unusually tender. The book keeps asking what a person is worth when they are confused, altered, grieving, or unable to fit the system around them. I appreciated that. It gives the story real heart. I also found the triangle around Caedris, Ferrid, and Jocco more interesting than a standard romance setup because it is tied to care, reverence, and different ways of seeing her, not just desire. Ferrid brings hunger, ambition, and intellect. Jocco brings steadiness and warmth. Caedris stands between power and personhood, and the book is strongest when it lets that tension breathe. At times, the story sprawls and the mythic scale threatens to blur the human scale, but even then, I could feel what it was reaching for.
I’d recommend The Elementist to readers who enjoy immersive secondary-world fantasy, especially fantasy that leans lyrical, spiritual, and emotionally earnest rather than fast and sharp-edged. Readers who like fae lore, living landscapes, old rites, and stories about memory, identity, and restoration will probably find a lot to hold onto here. It asks for patience, but it gives back atmosphere, sincerity, and a real sense of wonder. For me, that made it feel less like a book trying to impress me and more like one trying to invite me in.
He Will Make A Way of Escape For You
Reflections of Me: Living Life Experiences follows your journey through faith, family, hardship, and self-discovery in a poetic testimony of resilience, gratitude, and spiritual reflection. How has your relationship with God influenced the way you understand hardship and change?
God will not put more on you than you can bear, and he will make a way of escape for you.
God is a man that he should not lie, nor the son of man that he should repent: has he said it and shall he not do it? Or has he spoken, and shall he not make good on it. Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and the doors shall be open unto you.
“At Home Job” turns the pain of losing a long teaching career into a story of healing and acceptance. What was it like to write about that experience?
It was a sad, experience because I was not ready to retire. I had goals that I had not achieved and debts that I owed. It affected my family financially and emotionally. I stated to look at the bright side of things.
What do you hope readers take away from Reflections of Me: Living Life Experiences after finishing the collection?
God knows the plans he has for your life: plans to prosper you and not to harm you,plans to give you hope an a future. Look inside of you and find that hidden strength. You are an over- comer and victorious. Don t let your trials define who you are. Make those stumbling blocks into stepping stones. If you have the faith of a mustard, seed you can move mountains.
The short stories in this narrative poetry are about life experiences such as; looking in the mirror, self-image, blind fate, family reunions, “isms” of the world, friendships, my way of thinking, testing the trials of life, communications, betrayal, beware of the snares, math problems of everyday life, “As Is” and more of life experiences that everyone can relate to at some point and time in their past, as they look in the mirror and reflect upon their life. These are some of the short stories/ poems titles that you will find inside this book.
Play!: Professor Dante Marlowe Browne’s Wonderfully Marvelous Amazing Historical Book of Playgoing Manners With Adventures and Anecdotes by His Friends Collins and Violet
Play! follows Collins, his visiting cousin Violet, and their delightfully eccentric neighbor Professor Dante Marlowe Browne, as a simple trip to see Peter Pan turns into a time-traveling tour through theatre history. Along the way, they visit ancient Greek drama, medieval pageant wagons, commedia dell’arte, Shakespeare’s Globe, Molière’s France, a rowdy nineteenth-century American theatre, and the Savoy, learning not just what audiences used to do, but why modern theatre manners matter. By the time they finally reach the Sizzlepop Theatre, etiquette feels less like a list of rules and more like a way of caring for the magic happening onstage.
What I enjoyed most was the book’s sense of abundance. It’s packed with history, but it doesn’t feel cold or textbookish. The writing has a lively, old-fashioned sparkle to it, full of bustle, theatrical detail, and small comic moments, especially Collins’ endless hunger and Professor Browne’s grand, slightly chaotic energy. The book trusts children to make connections. It lets them see that audiences have always been part of the performance, sometimes beautifully and sometimes badly, and that good manners are really about attention, respect, and shared wonder.
The artwork gives the book a soft, timeworn charm that suits the subject beautifully. The illustrations feel like theatre sketches mixed with storybook history, sometimes delicate and sometimes wonderfully busy, with costumes, streets, stages, curtains, wagons, and crowds carrying a lot of the atmosphere. I found myself lingering over the scenes because they make each era feel distinct without overwhelming the story. The book is denser than many picture books, with a lot of historical information and a long journey to follow. For younger children, I’d probably read it in sections. For curious older kids, though, that richness is part of the pleasure.
By the end, I felt genuinely fond of this odd, theatrical little adventure. It has the heart of a manners book, the curiosity of a history lesson, and the warmth of a story told by someone who deeply loves the stage. The ending is satisfying because the children don’t just memorize rules; they understand what it means to be part of an audience. I’d recommend Play! for theatre-loving families, classroom read-alouds, homeschool arts units, and kids around seven to eleven who enjoy history, performance, and stories with a wise, whimsical grown-up leading the way.
Pages: 100 | ASIN : B0H34QK7XY
The Concept of Warriorhood
The WarriorSTRONG Manifesto is a self-development guide that urges readers to conserve their life energy, break destructive patterns, reject drama, and reclaim personal power through discipline, awareness, and self-mastery. What first inspired you to define “warriorhood” around harmlessness, discipline, and energy conservation rather than conflict or aggression?
My first exposure to the concept of warriorhood as a path to power rather than as a path of aggression came to me over 45 years ago through Carlos Castaneda, an influential and controversial American author who’s no longer on the planet. Starting in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of ten books featuring his conversations with don Juan, a Yaqui Shaman man of knowledge from Arizona and Mexico. Don Juan engaged Castaneda as his warrior apprentice. The teacher-to-apprentice narrative shared by Castaneda and don Juan is how information about warriorhood is haphazardly revealed to us.
Unfortunately for humanity, Castaneda had his own agenda, and he was slow to pick up on the revolutionary importance of don Juan’s teachings. This is why don Juan’s messages are presented to us in an incomplete, dis-orderly, non-actionable way. Even more, Castaneda’s storyline is sometimes fantastical and hard to believe. Because of this, some readers and authorities disregard don Juan’s voice and mistakenly categorize everything Castaneda wrote as fiction.
This is where I come in. My superpower is the ability see patterns, systems and strategies others miss. I find hidden gems of information in the same way an archeologist finds hidden gems and relics in ruins. Castaneda and don Juan left clues for us, and I found them. I studied them. I organized them. I wrote about them. Eventually, over a 20-year period, I began to humbly see myself as the foremost living expert on don Juan’s path to warriorhood. It’s how the WarriorSTRONG way was born in me. Instead, however, of creating a derivative work, I circumvented the baggage that comes with Castaneda and created my own unique brand.
You describe wasted life energy in vivid, practical terms. How did you develop the idea of treating personal energy almost like accumulated money?
Many years ago, Iwas teaching a seminar about Castaneda’s work, and I recall fishing around for the right words, trying to explain don Juan’s strategy to others. The example of wasting-saving-accumulating money and wasting-saving-accumulating life energy somehow organically popped out of my mouth. It was the only example I could think of that everyone could relate to and understand. I’ve been using it ever since.
For someone just beginning the WarriorsDailyCode, what is the first small but meaningful practice you would recommend?
The smallest most potent, meaningful practice I recommend is taking the 7-day stopping challenge. Pick one and only one small behavior and stop it for 7 consecutive days.
-Stop saying the f-word in every sentence for 7 days.
-Stop throwing clothes on the floor for 7 days.
-Stop hitting the snooze button for 7 days.
-Stop being late for 7 days.
-Stop speeding for 7 days.
The Warrior’s Daily Code is a helpful, convenient reminding tool for manifesting your stopping decision (making your decision real). It’s the place to write out your decision and for reading it during the 7-day period; the place to pick a start and stop date; the place to identify the biggest, most probable mistake and for coming up with a simple game plan to prevent it. Lastly, it’s the place to track daily performance and to quickly notice and correct mistakes.
Stopping is an under-rated underutilized life skill, typically relegated to recovery. It demonstrates personal power, mental toughness and the ability to walk your own talk. Stopping is essential because it overrides (transcends) the ego robot that lives in us all. Machines can’t stop themselves, but humans can. People can do hard things. Stopping and paying attention to what you’re doing isn’t as hard as most people think it is. A 7-day contained period is fast and easy enough for most people to successfully accomplish.
One last thing about stopping not included in the book. Don Juan teaches an advanced concept he calls “the assemblage point,” a spot outside the body and behind the shoulder blades where our life emanations (energetic filaments) collect and are held together. Stopping is the only tool humans have for moving the assemblage point from one position to another. Any movement of the assemblage point changes human perception and enhances human powers. It’s how warriors, witches and shamans acquire the power to perform healings, miracles and non-ordinary feats.
Author Links: karenbentley.com | Warriorstrongmanifesto.com | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads
The WarriorSTRONG Manifesto is a bold, countercultural path to personal power. Not self-help. Not twenty things to fix. Not another mindfulness book or one more of the same self improvement books. This is self-determination — the uncommon life of the everyday warrior.
Here is the truth no one tells you: you are not weak. You are leaking power. Like a boat full of holes that burns all its energy just to stay afloat, your life energy drains away through automatic, programmed mechanical behavior run by the “ego robot.” This programming, which you never consciously choose, forces your conformity, your compliance and your responses to provocation of every kind. The warrior’s first move is simple and impactful: find the leaks and plug them.
As a warrior, you can:
Live life on your own terms and cultivate a power accumulation mindset.
Turn high-pressure relationships into emotional strength, but never through attack.
Stop wasting your life and start saving it. Literally.
Override (or transcend) the ego robot and break free of predictable stereotypes.
Do the hard thing because power comes through consistency and discipline.
Forget the long list of things to fix. This path narrows the work to three skills: stopping, harmlessness and extreme self-care. Three to learn. Three to live by. These three skills deliver the trifecta reward of self-love, self-mastery, and personal power as well as a more conscious and purposeful life experience. The revolutionary message of life energy conservation and the development of three consequential skills are exclusive to The WarriorSTRONG Manifesto. You won’t find them anywhere else. This is precisely why The WarriorSTRONG Manifesto is one of the most transformative books you’ll ever read.
Bentley calls it the uncommon path of becoming WarriorSTRONG. You’ll call it an invitation to master your mindset and experience your own greatness.
Power is earned, never given.
Fair warning: once the mind is opened, it can never be closed.
Do you hear the warrior’s call? Begin the path today.
So You Want to Be A Candy Scientist
So You Want to Be A Candy Scientist is a delightful and informative children’s book that turns candy into a gateway for scientific discovery. Written for curious young readers, the book explores the fascinating work of candy scientists, showing how chemistry, creativity, and problem-solving come together to make the treats kids know and love. From gooey caramels and crunchy lollipops to chocolate that melts just right, Soules explains how small changes in temperature, texture, and ingredients can completely transform the final product.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is how accessible and engaging it makes STEM concepts feel. Rather than reading like a textbook, the book feels conversational and inviting, helping readers understand topics such as sugar stages, chocolate tempering, sour candy chemistry, and the science behind color and flavor. Young readers learn that a lollipop is technically glass, cotton candy is mostly air, and chocolate gets its satisfying snap from carefully formed crystals. These fun facts make the science memorable while encouraging children to keep asking “why.”
Author Linda Soules also does an excellent job introducing the real people and teamwork behind candy making. Readers meet pioneers such as Harvey Wiley, Milton Hershey, and Rebecca Robbins, whose discoveries helped shape candy safety, shelf-stable chocolate, and food coloring research. The book highlights that being a candy scientist is not just about tasting sweets all day; it takes patience, careful testing, communication, and the willingness to try again when experiments fail. This career-focused angle makes the book especially useful for classrooms, STEM lessons, and career exploration units.
The hands-on experiments and reference materials at the end make this book even more valuable. Activities such as growing rock candy, making edible sugar glass, and testing chocolate snap allow children to turn their own kitchens into mini laboratories. The colorful illustrations, clear explanations, glossary, and next-step resources all work together to inspire curiosity long after the final page. So You Want To Be A Candy Scientist is a fun, educational, and inspiring read for families, teachers, and young learners who want to discover how science helps make the world a little sweeter.
Pages: 38 | ISBN : 978-1972766590
Wake-Up Calls: A Journey of Learning to Lead and Succeed in the Funeral and Deathcare Profession
In Wake-Up Calls, Lisa Baue reflects on a lifetime in funeral service, beginning with the shattering 2 a.m. phone call announcing her father’s sudden death and moving through her transformation from grieving daughter and uncertain young funeral director into owner, mentor, coach, and advocate for women in deathcare. The book is both memoir and leadership meditation, shaped around the hard-earned triad of “head, heart, and grit.” Baue writes about inheriting responsibility before she felt ready, learning from mentors, failing in painful ways, changing the culture at Baue Funeral Homes, and finally widening her mission to support a profession that, in her view, must learn to care for its own people as tenderly as it cares for grieving families.
What struck me most was the honesty of Baue’s self-portrait. She doesn’t polish herself into an emblem of effortless resilience. She lets us see the woman sitting in her father’s office, overwhelmed by the smell of his pipe tobacco and cologne, asking aloud what she’s supposed to do now. She lets us see the absurd human details too, such as the roll of toilet paper trailing behind her as she collapses into the arms of her managers. The writing is plainspoken rather than ornate, but it often lands with quiet force because Baue trusts lived experience over performance. I found her strongest when she stays close to memory: her grandfather teaching grit through the bucking ponies Thunder and Lightning, the letter from her father urging the family to sell the business, the professional gatherings where she learned to hold her place in a man’s world, and the aching recognition that leadership can cost a family more than anyone admits in the moment.
I also appreciated the complexity of the ideas. Baue’s insistence on “head, heart, and grit” could have become a slogan, but the best chapters deepen it into something sturdier. Grit is not merely endurance. Heart is not softness. Head is not cold calculation. Together, they become a philosophy of humane leadership, one tested through grief, staffing challenges, business mistakes, work-life imbalance, and the painful 360-degree evaluation that forced her to confront how her own team felt unseen. I was especially moved by the later material on burnout and emotional boundaries, including her distinction between sympathy and empathy while serving the family of a boy whose face so closely resembled her son’s. That scene unsettled me in the best way. It reminded me that funeral service asks people to stand at the edge of other people’s devastation and remain both present and intact. Baue’s larger argument, that the deathcare profession must offer mentorship, fairer conditions, and real leadership development, especially for women entering the field, feels not abstract but embodied.
Wake-Up Calls felt to me like a book born from bruises, not theory. I closed the book with respect for Baue’s candor, her grief, her stubborn tenderness, and her refusal to separate business excellence from emotional responsibility. This is a thoughtful and affecting read for funeral directors, deathcare professionals, women in leadership, family business owners, mentors, and anyone trying to lead with both competence and a living, listening heart.
Pages: 199 | ASIN: B0FMH2SS7B
