Contributing Editor
Lee & Low Books
Hardcover, (978-1-6201-4286-8), 32 pgs., $18.95; August 7, 2018
Bookjoy, Wordjoy is the newest collection of poetry for children from Pat Mora, recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Texas at El Paso, among many distinctions. Especially in Texas, y’all may know her best as the founder of Children’s Day, Book Day (in Spanish, El día de los niños, El día de los libros), which celebrated its twenty-second anniversary this year.
Raúl Colón’s whimsical, joyful illustrations are inspired by Mora’s poems and Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. The colors are rich but muted, reminding me of a child’s colored map pencils. One of my favorites in this book is a boy attempting to capture words with a butterfly net as they cavort through the air:
words that move, like wiggle
that have a brown scent, cinnamon
that sweetly stretch, car-a-mel
hard words, brick
soft words, lullaby
Mora describes “bookjoy” as the fun of reading and “wordjoy” as the fun of writing — listening to words, combining them and playing with them. >>READ MORE
Beach Lane Books
Hardcover, 978-1-4814-6561-8 (also available as an e-book), 48 pgs., $17.99
September 25, 2018
“When Barbara Jordan talked, we listened.” —Former President of the United States, Bill Clinton
The late Honorable Barbara Jordan grew up in Houston’s Fifth Ward. “She may have looked like other kids … acted like other kids,” Chris Barton writes. “But she sure didn’t sound like other kids. Not with that voice of hers.”
Y’all remember that voice, yes? Sounded like the voice of God, deep and rich, sounded like the voice of moral authority, the voice of profoundly felt convictions. “That big, bold, booming, crisp, clear, confident voice,” in Barton’s words. “It caused folks to sit right up, stand up straight, and take notice.”
What Do You Do with a Voice Like That? The Story of Extraordinary Congresswoman Barbara Jordan is the new picture book from Austinite Chris Barton, author of the best-selling Shark vs. Train, Sibert Honor–winning The Day-Glo Brothers, and Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List books The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch (2016–17) and Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions (2017–18).
When I spoke with Barton a few weeks ago, he called Jordan “a true Texas hero” whose career in the Texas Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and on the faculty of the LBJ School of Public Affairs “set a shining example of how to take a natural gift and put it to use for the benefit of one’s community, state, and nation.”
The phrase “What do you do with a voice like that?” is a refrain throughout the book. >>READ MORE
FICTION
Pat Dunlap Evans
Out and In: A Novel
A. M. Chai Literary
Paperback, 978-0-9968822-2-4; 316 pages, $11.99; April 2016
Austin author Pat Dunlap Evans had specific goals in mind when she penned this book, her second: “I wanted to try my hand at a page-turner mystery with a female protagonist. I also wanted to use my long-ago experiences as an NFL wife as a backdrop for a novel.”
Her mystery-thriller Out and In succeeds on those fronts, and on other fronts as well.
The well-written tale starts quickly and with a bang: a Dallas arts society maven, Marie Donovan, is charged with capital murder and jailed after a famed opera orchestra conductor, Luca Scarlatti, is found dead. Scarlatti, the maestro of the Metroplex Opera, has been shot with Marie’s gun and stabbed with one of her long hairpins, which has a nerve agent on it. Meanwhile, some of Marie’s clothes have gunshot residue. And it is well known that she and the lecherous Scarlatti did get along. >>READ MORE
BIOGRAPHY/ POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
Kyle Longley
LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval
Cambridge University Press
Hardcover, 978-1-1071-9303-1, (also available as an e-book), 374 pgs., $29.99; February 22, 2018
Reviewed by Dr. Chris Manno
Longley’s narrative LBJ’s 1968 is so compelling from page one that by chapter three the reader has to stop to remember that it’s not actually about President Lyndon B. Johnson. Rather, the text is a riveting and, in many places horrifying, account of the year 1968 as Johnson wrestled with, in his own words, “that bitch of a war on the other side of the world” while struggling to lead a nation torn apart by antiwar and civil-rights protests and riots. >>READ MORE
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
New children’s books from three Texas authors
Penguin & Tiny Shrimp Don’t Do Bedtime by Cate Berry of Austin (Harper Collins, $17.99 hardcover, illustrated by Charles Santoso) is not a book about bedtime. Of course it’s not.
It’s a book about fireworks, running from lions, flying hot air balloons, sailing shark-infested waters. It’s a book about songs and corny jokes and staying up late until the hippo yawns. And everyone gets sleepy. And zzzzzzz.
But it’s not a book about bedtime.
Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies by Carmen Oliver of Round Rock (Capstone, $14.95 hardcover, illustrated by Jean Claude) finds Alelaide wanting to bring Bear to school.
Mrs. Fitz-Pea is assigning everyone in class a reading buddy. Adelaide sets out to convince the teacher that she already has a reading buddy, Bear, and that bears make the best reading buddies.
She makes a strong case, but is it enough to convince Mrs. Fitz-Pea?
Ben’s West Texas Snow by Callie Metler-Smith of Stamford (Clear Fork Publishing, $17.99 hardcover, illustrated by Christee Curran-Bauer) is a story about Ben, who lives in West Texas.
There’s a lot that Ben likes about West Texas, such as eating watermelon and fishing for catfish, but he really wishes it would snow.
Pop takes him into a field and they plow and plant cotton and wait for it to grow. Ben waits and waits and waits, and finally, one day, the field is full of soft “snow” — well, at least the West Texas version.
Berry, Oliver and Metler-Smith will speak at this weekend’s West Texas Book Festival in Abilene, discussing “Writing and Publishing Children’s Books” at 10:30 a.m. Saturday (Oct. 20) at the Abilene Woman’s Club. For a complete festival schedule, go to the Abilene Public Library website.
Political biography: Speaker Jim Wright: Power, Scandal, and the Birth of Modern Politics is a comprehensive, even-handed 400-page political biography of the Fort Worth congressman who rose through the ranks to become Speaker of the House, only to be forced to resign in 1989 after a partisan ethics investigation (University of Texas Press, $35 hardcover).
Author J. Brooks Flippen interviewed Wright extensively before his death in 2015 and was granted access to his personal diaries in preparing his narrative on Wright’s long, productive and controversial career, including twelve years as majority leader and Speaker.
The biography is divided into four parts: The Rise of a Politician (up to 1954); Congress in an Age of Tradition (1954–68); Leadership in an Age of Dynamism (1968–80); and Victory and Defeat in the Age of Reagan (1980–2015).
“To understand Jim Wright in all his complexity, with all his flaws and mistakes, all his strengths and triumphs,” Flippen writes, “is to understand much of the American past and the politicians who guided it. The story of Jim Wright, whether a tragedy or triumph, is a story of America.”
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Glenn Dromgoole writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
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