Sandra C. Lopez's Blog, page 161

Blog Tour: MOMMA LLAMA'S BOOK OF LATIN AMERICA by Momma Llama and Friends

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Momma Llama & Friends will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Momma Llama's ABC Book of Latin America is both fun and educational. This multicultural adventure includes people, places, and things from Central and South America - from Mexico to Argentina. The charming illustrations will make you and your child smile. Additionally, each page names the country or region of the subject; parents might learn something too.

Review: This book is a great, colorfully illustrated way to open kids up to a new culture while learning their ABC’s.

C is for chili pepper. E is for empanadas. And so on.  

It’s fun to go over some of the elements of Latin America. The only thing that would’ve been useful was to have phonetic spellings on the pronunciation. Not everyone will know how to say “Kinkajou.” Not only will kids learn the correct pronunciation, but it’ll also help improve their speaking and listening skills.

Overall, I think this is a good learning series, and I look forward to see what comes next.

 

Rating: 4 stars

 

 

About the Author: Momma Llama envisions a world in which Mom becomes the star and the hero of each fun-filled adventure, giving a new perspective to the way children learn and play.

Each story showcases Momma Llama, a hard-working independent, and adventurous mother, promoting ideas such as teamwork, determination, respect, and the idea that Moms give more than we realize.

Momma Llama aspires to unify the diverse cultures of the Americas by promoting multiculturalism in a fresh new way.

There’s always something new in Momma Llama’s magical world, so join us for more adventures.

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Blog Tour: WHERE IS HE? TANK, THE TORTOISE by Parimalasri Docktor

 

Where Is He? Tank, the Tortoise

by Parimalasri Docktor

 

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GENRE: Children's picture book

 

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BLURB:

 

"Where is he?" is about Tank, the Russian tortoise who lost his owner and was placed in a pet store. He missed his owner and routine habits. He goes to a new home. When not in the box, he roams around the house. His favorite meal is string beans.

 

 

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EXCERPT

 

 

 

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Review: Where is he? Tank, the tortoise, was wondering where his food was. Where was the man that fed him his beans?

In this story, we follow the sorrowful ode to special bond between a turtle and his owner. Then something happens that makes Tank believe in second chances.  

The story started off with illustrations that were well-crafted and colorful, but then, half-way through, the pages began to fill with actual photos of the tortoise. It was nice, but it felt a little out of place.

Overall, this was a cute tale that will invoke the inspiration to get a pet turtle.

 

Rating: 4 stars

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Parimalasri was born and raised in India. She moved to the United States in 1990.

She currently resides in Philadelphia. She has written a few children’s books and a

memoir. “Where is he?” is her fourth children’s book.

This is her debut as an author and illustrator. The wood burning illustration in the book is

by Parimalasri. She enjoys beadwork, painting, drawing and pyrography.

 

CONNECT WITH PARIMALASRI DOCKTOR

WEBSITE: https://parimalasridocktor.com/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/tank_chili_russian_tortoises/

GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22586415.Parimalasri_Docktor

 

PURCHASE LINKS: Where Is He? Tank, the tortoise

AMAZON.COM - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0228868599

BOOKTOPIA -

https://www.booktopia.com.au/where-is-he--parimalasri-docktor/book/9780228868590.html

KINDLE - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6Q86J4L

BARNES & NOBLE - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/where-is-he-parimalasri-docktor/1141835041

BOOK DEPOSITORY -

https://www.bookdepository.com/Where-Is-He-Parimalasri-Docktor/9780228868590

ABEBOOKS - https://www.abebooks.com/products/isbn/9780228868590

 

 

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GIVEAWAY

 

Parimalasri Docktor will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blog Tour: THE AFTER TIMES by Christine Potter

 

The After Times

by Christine Potter

 

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GENRE: YA Fantasy--Time Traavel

 

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BLURB:

 

Say you’re Gracie Ingraham, nerdy but happy high school senior. But you’re also a time-traveler from 1962 who got a bit lost and has been living in the 2000’s since 2018. That would be plenty without it now being 2020. Covid has just shut down the world. Your pandemic pod? Your BFF Zoey—and your ex-boyfriend, Dylan.

 

Dylan still lives to spin weird vinyl LP’s with your sort-of, kind-of Dad, Amp. So your quarantine hobby is going to have to be Being Mature About Stuff.

 

But then your time traveling kicks into high gear again.  And your long-lost brother and mom mix it up with a creepy, pyromaniacal force that is most likely demonic. How can love save the day when you can’t even go downtown without wearing a mask?

 

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Excerpt One:

 

We’d arrived at the first of the big, fancy gravesites: nineteenth century family plots, with tall, marble obelisks and statues of weeping angels. Some of them have creepy stone and marble mausoleums. Mausoleums are tombs the size of tiny houses with windows and even gates and front porches sometimes. You could go inside one if someone unlocked the door.

 

Some kids had obviously partied out by the mausoleums the night before.  They’d left a White Claw can one at of the sad angels’ feet. A few more cans were tossed on the ground and on the stone stairs to one of the bigger tombs. There were beer cans, too.

 

Zoey shook her head. “Some people are still getting out at night.”

 

“They could have at least recycled!”

 

“Alas!”

 

See, Zoey, Dylan, and me… We’re the kind teachers and parents don’t worry about. We always recycle. We don’t break quarantine. We wouldn’t have gone to a midnight graveyard party before quarantine … well … not without seriously good reason.

 

Not that Zoey wouldn’t snag a White Claw. And I did sneak out on one serious midnight date when Dylan and I were first together. But I also had to zap a demon that evening. Which was the last time anything interesting happened to me… Up until the very next minute, that is.

 

‘Cause then it wasn’t a pretty April day anymore. It was very cold and very dark. Zoey and I were still in the cemetery, but we weren’t by ourselves anymore.

 

 

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 GUEST POST

A Day In The Life…

 

I am a lucky writer.  I get to write every day. I taught high school English for years, and that was almost as good, but now I get to sleep past dawn.  (If you are in high school or you have kids in high school, you know I am not exaggerating about the crazy time classes start here in the States.)

 

Now, I let the light wake me up. So in the summertime, I’m at my computer pretty early.  In the winter or on a rainy day, not so much.  That alone is something about which I am deeply grateful. I take a hot bath, put on something stretchy enough to exercise later, and after I’ve done Wordle, I get down to work.

 

Social media is part of any writer’s toolkit these days, so I look around a little to see what my literary friends are up to and congratulate them for new publications.  OK—enough throat-clearing.  I’ve got coffee, and it’s time to make the doughnuts.

 

I always start writing by revising what I did the day before.  If I’m drafting a novel, I start about three or four pages back from where I left off and tinker a little. That refreshes my memory and sharpens my prose at the same time. Sometimes I pick up something that needs a bigger fix—a plot hole that needs something different a few chapters back, something that doesn’t ring true in a character’s reaction. 

 

By then I’m in flow and I move the book forward. When I’m lucky, I don’t even feel my fingers moving; stuff just happens.  Characters react, other characters react to their reactions, The Next Thing just happens.  I guess you’ve figured out that I’m a “pants-er” by now.  I know where my books are going to end, but I do not work from an outline.

 

I’m also a poet.  Especially if the fiction-in-progress is balking, I make another cup of coffee and work on revising some poems or submitting them to literary magazines. That’s something I tuck into my day whenever I can. In April, poets often gather in obscure places online and challenge each other to write a poem a day.  So if it’s April, I’m probably doing that first. Poems I sometimes like to write on my laptop before I’m even out of bed!

 

I try to get up a few times during the day to stretch and play with my cat Bella, who is almost always in my study with me. I grab some sort of simple lunch (a bowl of last night’s leftovers, a PBJ) at my desk.  Late in the afternoon, I go over to my sister’s house, where there is a good exercise bike and some Pilates stuff, ride, stretch seriously, play with the balls and bands, and watch junky TV.  I’m talking home renovation competitions and stuff.  Don’t judge.

 

Then I come back to our place and cook dinner for me and my husband.  I love to cook.  I did it for a living for a while in my twenties and thirties. I like pasta more than I should. I’m also in love with a gadget called a sous-vide circulator, which enables you to put lean proteins (chicken breast, pork tenderloin, grass-fed steak) in a baggie, seal it, and cook it at a low temperature to the exact place where it will be perfect if you sear it in a pan for a minute or two.  Couldn’t live without the thing.

 

During and after dinner, Ken and I listen to music—often classical choral stuff, because that’s what he’s done for a living his whole life, but sometimes rock and roll. I’m an old Dead Head and he and I both loved Harry Nilsson. I’m a major Robyn Hitchcock fan, and we listen to his stuff, or watch his live shows online. Then it’s whatever odd thing we’ve been streaming on TV and bed.

 

 What shows do a time-travel YA author and her singer/organist husband watch?  Well, we lovedSchmigadoon! We’re super-psyched to hear that a second season of that will be available soon. We were also totally hooked on Anne with an E, the newer CBC version of the Anne of Green Gables series.  I owe a LOT to Lucy Maud Montgomery, and although this TV adaptation departs from her original plot line, I think she’d like how it does.

 

So that’s how I spend my days.  Building a book is not as dramatic as putting up a sky scraper, but it’s what I do.  Welcome to the less-glamorous part of my world.  The fancy stuff’s all in my books!

 

 

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Christine Potter is a writer and poet who lives in a (for-real) haunted house in New York’s Hudson River Valley, not that far from Sleepy Hollow.  She is the author of Evernight Teen’s Bean Books, a five book series that travels through time—and two generations of characters. Christine is has also been a teacher, a bell ringer in the towers of old churches, a DJ, and a singer of all kinds of music. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines like Rattle and Kestrel, featured on ABC Radio News, and sold in gum ball machines. She lives with her organist husband Ken and two indulged kitties.

 

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christine.potter.543/

Insta: https://www.instagram.com/chrispygal/

Blog: chrispygal.weebly.com

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Christine-Potter/e/B001K7URHS/

 

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GIVEAWAY

 

Christine Potter will be awarding $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: AS TIME GOES BY by Mary Higgins Clark

Delaney Wright had only ever had one wish: to find her birth mother. To help find her, she asked Alvirah Meehan, the lottery winner, to do some research. Meanwhile, Delaney was a TV reporter covering a murder trial in which a woman was a accused of killing her wealthy and ailing husband.

As far as the murder went, Betsy Grant swore that she didn’t kill her husband and refused a plea bargain. Delaney sits through the trial, listening to the witness and testimonies, prompting a seed of doubt about her supposed guilt. Perhaps Betsy Grant didn’t do it.

In this story, we have 3 cases here: the murder case with wife pleading innocence, the midwife selling adopted babies, and the conspiracy involving the sale of powerful and lethal prescription drugs. How were they all connected? Only MHC can do an excellent job weaving together these case mysteries.

A compelling mystery with an epic ending!

 

Rating: 5 stars

Review: BQB'S TWISTED SHORTS: THE PHONE DID IT

 

“Your phone is your life.” That’s a scary thought. All you have to do is upload your lifetime profile and “it” knows. Geez!

It can automatically buy things for you based on your preferences and instantly charge it to your credit card. It can impersonate your voice and make that weekly call to your mother for you. It can photoshop you on a postcard photo of the tropical island without you even getting up. How very creepy iRobot!

“If you feel like doing it, chances are your phone has already done it.”

This certainly sounded like an interesting scary tale, but, unfortunately, it didn’t quite get there for me. It’s heavy on dialogue, often going on and on over the freak nature of this psycho phone. AAAHHH! Slow and repetitive. Not as short as you think and not as good as I thought it be. A decent read though.

 

Rating: 3 stars

Review: A GHOST IN THE ATTIC by Solomon Petchers

Story had an easy narrative, but it was too slow and trivial. We heard the boy talking about the kids at school, his mom, the kid on the bus, the math problem. OMG, get on with it already! He describes in great detail on the people but doesn’t focus much on the haunted attic until like chapter 8 (more than half-way through.)

It’s a rather okay read, I guess, but it just needed to get to the good stuff much sooner and quicker. Otherwise, it’s so not worth it.

 

Rating: 2 stars

Review: HARLEY JAMES AND THE PUZZLE IN PARIS by Leah Cupps

What kind of trouble can Haley get into in Paris?

Her journey begins with the news that a priceless artifact has been stolen from the Louvre. Then she gets a message from S.M.A.L.L, to which she is a secret agent of. The Rose de France was missing! Whoever brings it back to the secret chamber will resurrect all the bones resting in the catacombs. Yikes!

Can Harley use her talents of solving puzzles for this puzzle?

Another fun and mysterious adventure with lots of cool illustrations!

 

Rating: 5 stars

Review: HARLEY JAMES AND THE EMERALD TABLETS OF EGYPT by Leah Cupps

A trip to Egypt and a mother’s mysterious clue: THOTH. Sounds like Harley James would be in for another mind-boggling adventure. And this one begins with a mind-boggling message: “To master the universe is to master the mind.”

The mission was set: to protect the Emerald Tablets of Thoth. Whoever possessed them would have the ability to control minds.

This whole thing turns out to be an interesting expedition of a young Indiana Jones. A cool adventure and a nice read!

 

Rating: 4 stars

Review: SCAREDY BAT AND THE DRAGON NECKLACE by Marina Bowman

Ellie’s dragon necklace was missing. The necklace was a powerful vampire artifact given to her by her grandmother. If the necklace got into the wrong hands, the whole world can change in a second. Who could’ve stolen the necklace? The suspect list was on!

Another great, little mystery starring Scaredy Bat and her monster friends. A nice read

 

Rating: 4 stars

Review: YOU SAW TOO MUCH by Jay Nadal and Adam Nicholls

 

This had a slow start with the narrative discussing the Old New England town and its nosy residents. Basically, Lori had the perfect life in a boring town. The writing was pretty good, but, unfortunately, the story didn’t grab me off the bat and it felt like it was too much work to get into. Not what I expected.

 

Rating: 2 stars