Lil’ Boy’s Steps to Goal Achievement: A Goal Setting Journal for Kids by Dr. April L. Jones is a useful tool to guide children in the basic ideas, processes and successes of setting and achieving goals. The author emphasizes how children can take an active...

Cardboard Confessionals by Mitch Reed is a compilation of responses provided by young students when he implemented a social experiment/project for his sociology students at Waverly-South Shore. Seven questions were composed and a cardboard box set up where the students could anonymously submit their answers....

Joshua and Stranger Danger is a children’s picture book written by Joan E. Derrick and illustrated by Laila Savolainen. Seven-year-old Joshua was on his own that afternoon after school came out. He usually had his older brother for company, but Ethan wasn’t there that day....

It is a nation that elicits strong opinions and emotions across the globe. For a long time, Israel has been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic sentiments and actions. In Israel - Against All Odds, Christopher H.K. Persaud presents the journey of the Jewish people...

Toni is a tanager, a small but very colorful bird with a tweeting attitude. She is honest to the core, almost brutally honest, taking pleasure in taunting the tree toads for only having three toes. Terri, another tanager, scolds Toni, insisting that she consider the...

The Rabbit Skinners by John Eidswick is fully comparable and sometimes superior to any Jack Reacher or Lucas Davenport novel on the market. Such comparison is meant to convey just how good this book is. Besides the meticulously satisfying plot (more on that later,) this...

Anna Minte's Q1: A Survival Guide to Adulting is a nonfiction self-help book for new adults. Minte is a college professor who lives and works in the Dominican Republic. While the midlife crisis is a relatively well known phenomenon that seems to affect at least...

The Fishermen and the Mermaids is a work of fantasy adventure fiction written for children by author Judith M. Ackerman and illustrated beautifully by Kristina Wheeat. Set on the high seas with a magical element at play, the story begins with a father, who was...

Element Girls: The Lost Goddess by Giulietta M. Spudich is a story about the bond between four friends. Tess has three best friends she can't do without. Tess is rarely apart from Elizabeth, Susie, and Amelia but recently things seem to have changed with Amelia...

Sparky the Dragon Bus was a normal bus, just like any other double-decker bus. Every bus on the city street looked the same except their number plates and destinations were different. It was a normal day and some important people came to the bus yard....

The question of whether the horrors of the Holocaust are over for the next generation is a pressing and haunting theme in Ruth Rotkowitz’s Escaping the Whale. Set in 1980, Brooklyn, this is the story of 28-year-old Marcia Gold, a high school guidance counselor who...

Max thinks he’s too old to play with the younger children. Gloria, the once bright red London bus, now painted with vividly colored pictures to attract children, provides a fun, safe place for children to play during the holidays. Gloria is a Playbus. But Max...

Sanhinga by James O'Leary is the story of a teenager as he is forced into situations he never even imagined. Born in Elk Horn, Alaska, Isaak is a fifteen-year-old boy who has big aspirations for his future. He moved to Denmark on a scholarship at...

Finding a portal through an Ouija board, a demonic entity destroys lives for over five decades in the paranormal horror novel, Invitation to Darkness by Barb Shadow. In 1939, Maggie Borden dies leaving behind her grieving husband, Ezra, and her young son, J.P. Blaming J.P....

Letters From a Broken Man comprises fifteen messages before the denouement. The first “from” and the remainder “a letter to” and the recipients vary from God to “the Monster”. The letters are presented as poetry, rhyming mainly, but without the constraints of a traditional form....

Eloquence That Feeds the Soul should be the subtitle for A Sword Song for Blood Roses, a poignant offering of poems by Joan Wiley. While relatively short insofar as books go, A Sword Song for Blood Roses definitely packs a huge emotional punch. It’s divided...

Let's Make a Rainbow: A Yoga Story for Kids by Susan Rose is a beautiful book inside and out. It was raining outside and Lilly wanted to use her imagination to take her away, so she asked her brother to do some yoga to make...

When I come across poetry I'm excited because I experience and embrace the thoughts, emotions, and transparency of the author. With over thirty poems in Among the Dying Violets by Barb Shadow, the author did not disappoint. Poems like Grandpa, My Father, Unspoken, and Moms...

The Flying Cutterbucks by Kathleen M. Rodgers is a women-centric drama novel that follows three women whose fates irrevocably changed after a traumatic event in their lives. It's 2016. Trudy watches with horror as the man admitting to groping women without their consent on record...

What Is Your Story? by Lynn Deiulis is an educational book that uses the lives and activities of caterpillars and butterflies to explain parenthood, adoption, and other ways families are often created. Families can be connected by more than just blood, and there are so...