Author: Melissa Prycer
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Home Front Girl: A Review
Reading someone’s diary, even when given permission, can be scary business. Can they write? Is it just going to be a bunch of gossip about people you don’t know? Do they ramble too much? There are plenty of published diaries out there, some by famous folk and some by people who happened to live in…
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Historian Hero
Gerda Lerner, one of my historian heroes, died today. I first became acquainted with her work during a women’s history class at Hendrix College. It was a wonderful, wonderful class, where we had thoughtful discussions and read some really great stuff. During that class, I realized I had always been interested in women’s history, but…
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Favorites of 2012
Now that the hustle and bustle of Christmas is past (and I look forward to lots of lazy yet productive days at home), I’ve started doing my annual sorting and cleaning throughout the house. And somehow, that always includes looking back at my year in books. Below are a few favorite kidlit history books of…
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Riding into history
I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all learn to ride, or fall into oblivion and despair. –Frances Willard Election Day is almost upon us. I think the only thing that everyone can agree on is that it’s all been very interesting.…
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The joy of rereading
I don’t remember when I first read Little Women. I do know how I discovered it. We had a small collection of classics that had been my aunts’–they were girls in the 1930s and 1940s, so they were really beautiful editions. Little Women was in that collection (I think with illustrations by Jessie Wilcox Smith, but…
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Work hard for a living
I never thought I’d get excited about economic history. Or economics, in general. But when everything crashed in 2008, I got interested. I remember being completely transfixed while listening to This American Life’s podcast about the real estate meltdown (A Giant Pool of Money). And dumbfounded that I was so fascinated. I started reading the…
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Picture book history
Lots of authors write memoirs and autobiographies. Some of these are even aimed at children–Beverly Cleary’s A Girl From Yamhill comes to mind. But how many authors write a picture book memoir? Earlier this summer, I ran across a mention of William Steig’s When Everybody Wore a Hat on Melissa Wiley’s blog. Steig is best…
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Things that make me happy. . .
Staying up past midnight, finishing one of the best books I’ve read all year. And did I mention that it’s historical fiction? Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein probably has a very long wait-list at the library (it took me months to get it), but it’s so worth the wait. British women in World War…
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When bedtime stories and headlines collide
It’s not often that I get the pleasure of reading books aloud to little ones. The local nephews are either way too big (18 years old!) or way too little (7 months old). There are no local nieces. But, I am an occasional babysitter for two delightful little girls in the neighborhood that love to…
Prycer Consulting 