An older child resentful of the attention paid to a new baby brother or sister is a popular theme for children’s books; the Little Critter series by Mercer Mayer and the Berenstain Bears by Jan and Stan Berenstain offer just two... Read More

Trying to digest the extent and implications of Gordon L. Ewell’s injuries is nearly impossible. A career soldier, the master sergeant was severely wounded in an IED explosion in Iraq. After fifty-nine missions, it was the sixth such... Read More

There’s a curious trend among some contemporary poets to produce collections that include annotations, backstory, and personal history. In the introduction to Deidre Alexander’s Making of a Poet: Reflections in Verse, editor J. Ralph... Read More

While perhaps not quite up to the five-star standard of George R.R. Martin and C.S. Lewis, and perhaps more akin to Disney’s A Kid in King Arthur’s Court than to Twain’s original, S. Cameron Roach’s "The Scrolls of Udanadar" is... Read More

Blake Walker’s debut novel takes the reader down the roads that Tolkien built, makes a left turn into Robert Howard’s lands, and goes straight on into the world of a young warrior named Katrina, who faces the greatest challenge of... Read More

It would be easy to dismiss the free-spirited imagery that adorns both the front and back covers of Eileen Kramer’s memoir, "Walkabout Dancer", as silly or amateurish. Like comparable books with a choreography theme, however, its... Read More

In comedy parlance, a throwaway joke gets delivered in a casual, easy manner. Its power comes from the lack of emphasis placed on it. A throwaway works only when the comedian or writer refrains from showing any awareness that he’s even... Read More

The Bible prescribes “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” as compensation for an injustice, but Gordon Planedin writes about situations that he believes call for more violent solutions. In "An Eye for a Tooth", he offers five... Read More