By Taylor Jasmine | On November 7, 2017 | Updated January 29, 2019 | Comments (0)
For fans of the Moffats series, The Moffat Museum (1983) by Eleanor Estes is an extra-special treat, since this fourth (and last) installment in the series was published more than forty years after the first book (The Moffats) appeared in 1941.
The four Moffat children were raised in the small (fictional) Connecticut town of Cranbury by their single mother in the early 1900s. In this story, they decide to start a museum to preserve the memories and objects belonging to their childhood, now that they are growing up. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On November 6, 2017 | Updated March 28, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 2003 edition of Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence: In Becoming Jane Austen, Jon Spence shows how events and people in Jane Austen’s own early life affected her so deeply that she continually reshaped them into the plot and characters of her fiction. He pays special attention to two individuals: Tom Lefroy and Eliza de Feuillade.
Tom is the charming young man, about to begin law studies, whom Austen met at a ball when she was just twenty. The two quickly fell in love and hoped to marry.
Eliza is the glamorous, flirtatious older cousin who married a French count who lost his head to the guillotine during the French Revolution. Her unabashed pursuit of Jane’s younger brother Henry, which began when he was only fifteen, shocked the future author.
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By Taylor Jasmine | On November 3, 2017 | Updated May 2, 2023 | Comments (0)
From the 1965 Farrar, Straus, Giroux edition of The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L’Engle: Young Adam Eddington, a brilliant student specializing in marine biology, secures a summer job as assistant to the world famous Dr. O’Keefe, who’s laboratory is situated on Gaea, a small island off the coast of Portugal.
Before the plane takes of from Kennedy International Airport, Adam makes the acquaintance of Caroline Cutter, an attractive girl whose father has business interests in Portugal. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On October 25, 2017 | Updated April 10, 2024 | Comments (0)
The Rescuers by Margery Sharp was the first children’s novel by this British author, who was also known for her romantic comic novels for adults (one of the best known of which was Cluny Brown). With drawings by well-known American illustrator Garth Williams, it was published in 1959, both in the UK and US.
The novel launched a series of books starring Miss Bianca, a socialite mouse who assisted animals as well as humans in perilous situations, and fellow mice Bernard and Nils. These well-received children’s novels have had legions of grown-up fans as well, and all told added up to nine books.
Disney adapted the stories to two animated films, The Rescuers (1977) and The Rescuers Down Under ( 1990). This brief description is from the New York Review of Books edition (2016): Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On October 24, 2017 | Updated December 23, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the 1957 Little, Brown edition of The Eye of Love by Margery Sharp: She was his lovely Spanish rose, the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld. He was her bluff King Hal, tall and handsome, the masterful lover of her dreams.
Only Margery Sharp, author of Cluny Brown and Britannia Mews could have written this civilized, witty, and wise story of Harry Gibson and Dolores Diver, a pair of lovers who always saw each other — no matter how others might see them — with the eye of love. Read More→
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