{"id":304,"date":"2018-12-31T11:41:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=304"},"modified":"2018-12-31T11:41:21","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:41:21","slug":"texas-reads-archiveglenn-dromgoole-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=304","title":{"rendered":"Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

10.4.15\u00a0\u00a0 Texas books for Texas kids make good reading<\/h1>\n

Benny the Bat:<\/span> Maurice Parsley Mallow<\/span> of Brady is the author and Debra H. Warr<\/span> of Fort Worth the illustrator of a wonderful children\u2019s book about a bat who is afraid to fly.<\/p>\n

Benny: The Bat Who Would Not Budge!<\/span><\/a><\/span> (MasAir Publications, $10.99 paperback) is in black and white, which is very unusual for a children\u2019s book but quite appropriate for the subject. Benny the bat lives in a cave with 20 million other Mexican free-tailed bats that only come out at night to hunt mosquitoes and other insects.<\/p>\n

Benny, who is just eight weeks old, has a problem. He has a fear of flying, or rather a fear of falling. His mother tells him a secret, and that encourages him to give it try.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>Twelve Cowboys Ropin\u2019:<\/span> When I first picked up Twelve Cowboys Ropin\u2019<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Susan Holt Kralovansky<\/span> (Pelican Publishing, $16.99 hardcover), I figured it was a Christmas book with a Texas theme, and I suppose it could be. But you don\u2019t really have to wait until Christmas to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn my first day in Texas,\u201d it begins, \u201cmy pappy gave to me \u2014 a mockingbird in a pecan tree.\u201d The second day in Texas comes with two horny toads, the third day with three butterflies \u2014 and so on, finishing up with twelve cowboys ropin\u2019. Along the way are prickly pears, longhorns, bats, armadillos, dancin\u2019 gals, and more. And the book even includes the tune, so everyone can sing along.<\/p>\n

Kralovansky, a former elementary school librarian who lives near Austin, also wrote There Was a Tall Texan Who Swallowed a Flea <\/span>(Pelican, $16.99), a fun takeoff on a familiar tale \u2014 illustrated by Deborah Ousley Kadair.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0The tall Texan swallows a toad to catch the flea, a snake to eat the toad, and so on until he has quite a bellyache.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>Whistling Willie:<\/span> New this fall from Pelican is Whistling Willie from Amarillo, Texas,<\/span><\/a><\/span> by mother-daughter writing team Jo Harper<\/span> and Josephine Harper,<\/span> and illustrated by David Harrington<\/span> ($16.99 hardcover).<\/p>\n

Willie really wants to be a Texas Ranger, but Rangers are lean and tough and serious, while Willie smiles and whistles and is a bit on the chubby side. But when Sidewinder Slim and Corkscrew Slade steal all the soda pop and ice cream from the Fourth of July celebration, Willie and his whistle go into action.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>Hound Dawg:<\/span> Dallas librarian Patricia W. Vermillion<\/span> is the author of Hound Dawg,<\/span><\/a><\/span>about a lazy mutt who doesn\u2019t pitch in to help around the farm but wants to reap the rewards of everyone else\u2019s hard work (TCU Press, $21.99 hardcover, illustrated by Cheryl Pilgrim<\/span>). But when he jumps in to chase away a bandit about to steal the cornbread, the other farm animals realize maybe Hound Dawg isn\u2019t so worthless after all.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

Glenn Dromgoole,<\/span> co-author of 101 Essential Texas Books<\/span><\/a><\/span> has teamed up with Jay Moore to write a children\u2019s picture book, Abilene A to Z,<\/span> about the city\u2019s history and culture \u2013 published fall 2015 by Abilene Christian University Press. <\/span>Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> <\/span>Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 10.4.15\u00a0\u00a0 Texas books for Texas kids make good reading Benny the Bat: Maurice Parsley Mallow of Brady is the author and Debra H. Warr of Fort Worth the illustrator of a wonderful children\u2019s book about a bat who is afraid to fly. Benny: The Bat Who Would Not Budge! (MasAir Publications, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}