notanotherbookreview

Sometimes I dip into a YA book and synch with teen yearnings for a different better life--and realize I'm an adult, a fact I can easily forget in an imaginative treasure like The Time-Traveling Fashionista by Bianca Turetsky (Little Brown and Co.) I have collected vintage clothes for decades and given them on to owners they better suit, so this is a book for me. And for girls and moms who love adventure, the mysteries of time and timeless design. Louise is a skinny 7th grader with braces on her teeth, frizzy hair, and weird parents--a Brit mom who boils food in vinegar a "Stepford" lawyer dad. Her life in Connecticut is made okay by her best friend, Brook, with whom she carefully navigates the awful indignities of Middle School. These include the inept boy, who somehow can't figure out how to ask her to the dance. The last time, she scurried away, embarrassed, wishing he'd get some social skills. But she's more interested in shoping for the perfect dress and f...

In The King's Arms is published by McWitty Press and won't be out until October. It's a fun read. This book manages to be light and funny, serious and passionate and yet is wise, witty and deep. Class and identity, Oxford intellectuals and the Holocaust, theater, tradition and assimiliation are all probed here in a tale of love at first sight that actually has a satisfying happy ending. Here goes. Lily Taub is a marvel. She's academically gifted, the beautiful and articulate daughter of Holocaust survivors. She grows up in NY and is raised never to take safety or her status in life for granted. But Lily, who grew up with the devastating stories of her parents' life in the death camps, yearns for great romance, fun and frivolity, as well as respect in the world beyond the insular community of survivors. When Oxford offers her a scholarship to study, she happily escapes, savoring her new status, while fearing it will somehow be taken away, because she is a Jew. At fir...

Tales of the Mer Family Onyx: Mermaid stories on land and under the sea Susan I. Weinstein NEW EDITION completely updated with illustrations Whether male or female, virtuous or amoral, mythical Mer creatures often reflect humankind’s ambivalence about nature.  Tales of The Mer Family Onyx  explores their worlds through the magical household of Neptune and Glendora, stewards of the seas. Like L. Frank Baum’s  Oz  and E. Nesbit’s  Five Children and It , this is a “family book” for adults and mixed age groups of children. Among the Onyx clan are toddler Ruby, tween boy-girl twins, teen beauties and Pinky, a mini mermaid. When Neptune challenges his children, they discover their limits in forbidden caves, worlds out of time and at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, where an Earth boy’s dream comes true. Susan I. Weinstein is a writer, playwright, and painter.  She is the author of 3 books, THE ANARCHIST'S GIRLFRIEND, PARADISE GARDENS and TALES OF THE MER FAMILY O...