Lori Duff Writes
There are certain kinds of battles that certain kinds of people are always going to lose. Every single time. Let’s say there are two families who go to the beach. The Smith family wants to enjoy the smell of the salt air and the sounds of the surf, swim, build sand castles, and read books…
Skink–No Surrender Carl Hiaasen is a Florida boy, and he’s written about eighty million books for adults. They are all set in Miami and the Florida Keys, fun, quirky, adventurous, and usually have an environmental theme. His young adult books are equally good, and have won awards, rightfully so. Sink — No Surrender melds a recurring character…
I’ve never been much of a gum chewer. As someone who has teeth removed and orthodontia to fix Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ), I’m lazy and not a huge fan of exercising those (or any) muscles unnecessarily. (Especially when there are so many wonderfully necessary uses for those muscles, such as eating pie.) Plus, gum loses…
Openly Straight In Openly Straight, a young adult book by Bill Konigsberg, Rafe, a Colorado teen, has been out of the closet since eighth grade. He doesn’t get much flak from his schoolmates for it, but he is known as “the gay kid” and this has repercussions socially. He’s athletic and reasonably smart, and…
Everything old is new again, they say, and just like you can actually find legwarmers for sale, and real live fashionable teenagers wearing them, other 80s things are making a comeback. After we decided that earrings were a no-go for my son’s birthday (click here to read more about that parenting dilemma) he decided he wanted…
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption This week was Veteran’s Day. While I can’t say that I spent the whole day in prayers of thanks for the veterans who have served our country, I did actually spend some time thinking about my father and grandfather and how hard it must…
It’s been a while since I wrote about how much I like food, but I hope that does not make you think for a second that I have quit eating for the sheer pleasure of it. I’m having a bad day. I mean, not in the way that people in Prisoner of War camps have…
There are two kinds of people in my house: the late kind and the early kind. I’m the early kind. My husband is the late kind. In fact, my husband is so much the late kind that there are times when he doesn’t show up at all. Our children are likewise divided. My son is…