Thank you to Henry Padron of Hipocampo Children’s Books for an ARC of The Totally True Story of Gracie Byrne, by Shannon Takaoka. In this surprising story set in western Pennsylvania in 1987, high-school student Gracie Bryne hated living in her grandmother's house, where she, her mother and brother stayed with the grandmother who had ALZ. The realistic story took an unlikely twist when Gracie altered the future by writing in an old journal she found. Entertaining and thought provoking.

In the process of letting go of decades of books, I came across the 1963 edition of The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events by Bernard Grun. Like the Time-Life Old West series from the Seventies, this was one of the books that set me on the path to writing non-fiction history. How I loved skimming its entries for History and Politics; Literature and Theater; Religion, Philosophy, Learning; Visual Arts; Music; Science, Technology, Growth; and Daily Life. This was before online spreadsheets and I found the format and readability easy on the eyes and mind. There were only three entries for all of  5,000 to 4,001 BCE. The three packed pages under for 1978 ended with the New York Yankees defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers to win their second World Series. Seems so long ago!

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