A Reading Partner for Emerald

A Reading Partner for Emerald
by Patricia Vermillion (Author) and Lily Thompson (Illustrator)
@ Amazon* | Bookshop*

Booktalk: Emerald loves to read. She lives in a library surrounded by books, yet she is lonely. Everyone wants a reading partner. Especially Emerald. Exploring the library bookshelves, Emerald meets friends who ask to read together, but none of their stories have that magic spark. Only when Emerald acts quickly to save a friend in need does she find the perfect reading partner–and the tale she longed to read.

Snippet: In a certain library lived a lonely lizard whose skin was as bright as a blade of summer grass.

The author, Patricia Vermillion, is one of my former students.
Copyright © 2023 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved. (*bookstore affiliate)

The Bigfoot Queen

The Bigfoot Queen (The Littlest Bigfoot Book 3)
by Jennifer Weiner (Author)
@ Amazon* | Bookshop*

Booktalk: Alice Mayfair, Millie Maximus, Jessica Jarvis, and Jeremy Bigelow face their biggest challenge yet when exposure of the sacred, secret world is threatened by a determined foe, someone with a very personal reason to want revenge against the creatures who call themselves the Yare.

The fate of the tribe and its members’ right to live out peacefully in the open is at stake. Impossible decisions are made, friendships are threatened, secrets are revealed, and tremendous courage is required. Alice, her friends, and her frenemies will have to work together and be stronger, smarter, and more accepting than they’ve ever been.

But can some betrayals ever be forgiven?

Snippet: Charlotte Hughes had been born in a dying town, to parents who didn’t survive to see her second birthday. They’d perished in a car accident after their minivan had hit a patch of black ice and skidded off the road. Charlotte’s father had been pronounced dead on the scene. Her mother had died in the hospital later that night. Baby Charlotte, strapped into her car seat, had survived without a scratch, and had been sent to live with her father’s mother, her only surviving relative, who, clearly, had no interest in raising another child. Grandma managed Upland’s only bed-and-breakfast, and it was an exhausting, thankless job—but one Grandma always said she was lucky to have, given how many in town couldn’t find any work at all.

In the winter, when the skiers who weren’t able to locate lodging closer to the mountain resorts booked rooms, Grandma worked from sunrise to late at night, doing laundry, cleaning, and cooking, and as soon as Charlotte was tall enough to push a broom or carry a load of dirty towels to the basement, she had to help her. There were floors to be swept and mopped, beds to be stripped and made, trash cans to be emptied, carpets to be vacuumed, and toilets to be scrubbed. Even when they didn’t have guests, there was always cleaning. The big, old house seemed to generate its own dust and grow its own cobwebs. Little Charlotte would wake up at five in the morning to iron napkins and to bake scones and clear snow off the porch. She made beds and cleaned bathrooms. She learned to be invisible, to slip in and out of the rooms when the guests were gone, so quickly that they hardly noticed she was there. Her hands would chap and her skin would crack and she’d yawn her way through her school days.

Copyright © 2023 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved. (*bookstore affiliate)