Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 56

"The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett

It's been decades since I read this book last.  I read it multiple times when I was a kid and in my teens, but haven't had time for it since.  Until now!  I nabbed one of the gorgeous hardcover copies from Barnes & Noble when they were having a sale and decided it would be a perfect book to read aloud to my kids.

And we definitely enjoyed it!  I had fun trying to do the Yorkshire accents (which I'm sure I butchered atrociously) and they had fun watching Mary and Colin turn from selfish brats into...

"Light in the Dark Belt: The Story of Rosa Young as Told by Herself"

Rosa Young was born in poverty in Alabama in 1890.  Her parents were devout Christians; her father was an African Methodist pastor.  She grew up in what she calls a "log hut" (p. 19) with nine siblings. Though she had the opportunity to go to school on and off as a child, she learned more from her father's brother, who had attended Tuskegee Institute, than she did from the school teacher.  She later taught her siblings all she could at night after they worked on the family farm.

Young describes h...

Manga Shakespeare "Hamlet" adapted by Richard Appignanesi, illustrated by Emma Vieceli

Occasionally, I find a graphic novel version of Hamlet that I haven't read before.  Or, as in this case, my husband finds one for me :-)  I've read at least three others -- maybe I ought to do a post here comparing them sometime.

This one is set in the future.  The prologue says, "The year is 2107.  Global climate change has devastated the Earth.  This is now a cyberworld in constant dread of war.  Prince Hamlet of Denmark has come home to face an uncertain future..."  By setting it in a futurist...

"The Secret of Pembrooke Park" by Julie Klassen

I do believe this is the first book by Julie Klassen I've ever read!  I've seen her books around the blogosphere and bookstagram for YEARS, but it wasn't until a friend loaned me this one this spring that I finally got to read one.

All in all, I did enjoy it.  It wasn't wonderful, but I also stuck with it the whole way.  I do feel like about 100+ pages in the middle were unneeded.  I could practically see the author getting a note from her editor saying "Should be longer -- expand the middle" and...

"Five Seasons of Angel" edited by Glenn Yeffeth

I don't talk about it much on this blog because this is my book blog, not my movies/writing/life blog, but Angel (1999-2004) is my second-favorite TV show of all time.  This spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) follows vampire-with-a-soul Angel (David Boreanaz) to Los Angeles as he seeks to make amends for all the harm he had inflicted on others before being cursed with a soul.  It's kind of a supernatural film noir series, especially for the first couple of seasons.

Angel debuted my ...

"Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule" by Harriette Gillem Robinet

I didn't realize, when I pulled this book off my TBR shelves last week, just how perfectly timed this read would be.  As our nation grapples with difficult problems stemming from racial wrongs and misunderstandings, books like this that can teach adults and children alike some hard truths about our nation's history -- and its present -- are especially valuable.

What a poignant, approachable book this is!  As you know, I've been writing a book, One Bad Apple, that takes place in the 1870s and has ...

"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen (yet again)

This is the first time I've reread Pride and Prejudice since 2013.  I feel like admitting that might get me hauled away for insufficient Austen fandomness or something.  But it's true.

Anyway.  Once again, this book delighted me.  It made me laugh.  It made me smile.  It made me unaccountably anxious to zip through the last third or so of the book so Lizzy and Mr. Darcy wouldn't have to be separated for too long.  Isn't it amazing how a story I KNOW so very well can still make me want to hurry up...

"Stardust" by Neil Gaiman

This book was not what I was expecting.  I was expecting more of an urban fantasy sort of thing, with someone from the modern world stepping into one filled with magic, or vice versa.  I don't even know why I thought that's what this was.  But anyway, it's not.

It's actually about people living in a little town on the other side of the wall from a gap between the "real world" and faerieland.  And about two boys, one the father of the other, who go through that gap and change their lives forever. ...

Cover Reveal for "One Bad Apple"

Here it is!!!


My cover artist has done it again!  Could this cover be any more gorgeous?  I think not!  And it so totally screams "Snow White set in the Old West," doesn't it?  Plus a little hint of Hamlet in there, since One Bad Apple has a lot of Hamlet overtones.

What exactly is One Bad Apple about?  Well, it's about seven white orphans who are reluctantly allowed to join an all-black wagon train headed to Kansas.  The orphans just want to find their only remaining adult relative, a homesteadin...

"The Railway Children" by E. Nesbit

I loved this book when I was a kid.  Guess what?  I still love it now!  I read it out loud to my three kiddos this month, and they just ate it up.  I read them the Usborne Illustrated Original edition pictured here, and the illustrations by Ji-Hyuk Kim are GORGEOUS.  Especially everything involving the trains.

Three children and their mother have to leave their London home to go live in a small cottage in the English countryside because their father... has had some trouble befall him.  Trouble yo...