The Atlas Obscura Explorers Guide for the Worlds Most Adventurous Kid — Review

Thought for the Day:

“Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.”

~ Christina Rossetti, poet ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

There are a lot of resources and communities on line for writers. The post HERE from reedsy lists Fourteen of the Best Online Writing Communities for Writers.

I am always on the lookout for good posts about editing. Joanna Penn at The Creative Penn has an excellent post HERE called Writing Tips: 10 Ways to Fake a Professional Edit.

Getting character description into our works without too much author intrusion is tricky indeed. The post HERE from Louise Harnby will help you with that. Her examples are terrific.

Here is another fun shopping tip to help with your holiday gift buying, but you might want to buy a gift for yourself when you see what I have HERE for you.

Last week I promised one of you a gently-read ARC of The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden. This week’s winner is Danielle Hammelef. Congratulations, Danielle! She always shares my link in several places for extra chances, and sometimes is pays of. Thanks for doing that, Danielle. I will get your book out to you soon. No giveaway this week. My granddaughter’s school library is a little richer for the wonderful book I want to tell you about.

Not long ago, I ran across a book called The Atlas Obscura and couldn’t get enough of the wonderful articles in it. It’s just fascinating. So when I saw a middle-grade rendition of it —   The Atlas Obscura Explorers Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid — on the review list, I knew I had to check it out. Here is the review I wrote for the San Francisco Book Review.

Who doesn’t love to dream of a great adventure? There are so many strange and wonderful places in the world, it would be great to have a source for young people to be able to find out about some of the more wondrous places one could go. This youngster’s edition of the very popular adult Atlas Obscura will be welcomed by kids everywhere. Lively writing by authors Dylan Thuras and Rosemary Mosco tells about some of the most amazing places on our planet such as a deep cave in New Zealand that seems to be filled with stars, but is actually with by glowworms, or the sunken city of Heracleion off the coast of Egypt, or maybe just a weird tree with a bicycle grown into it in Washington state. The illustrations by Joy Ang are done in quiet colors and are quite realistic without losing their illustrative charm. Each spread has two destinations, sometimes in the same country, sometimes in different countries. A world map pinpoints the spot and coordinates are given. A fun description of the place will fascinate anyone reading and make one want to update one’s passport and get traveling. Don’t miss this one.

Check back next week. I may have a giveaway then. If you are reading this in your email, please click HERE to get to my blog, then click on the title of the post, and leave a comment. And don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at the Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.