Babe To Teens, Past
A Youth Column
By Beverly Rowe

Interview with Candida Labrecque, New book recommendations and even great web sites to explore!

What will 2009 bring for you? We would love to hear how you are doing with your New Year's resolutions. Send an email to bevbooks@aol.com, and put "New Year - Babes to Teens" in the subject line, and please do mention what your favorite book is. I will send a free book to everyone who responds, and print your letters in March.

How is your book terminology? Clique Lit was a new term for me to investigate...and there is lots of new Clique Lit being published now. Teens seem to love these fast moving stories of teens being teens. Here is one of the latest....

A brand new clique-lit novel for teens: Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (Poseur Novel) by Rachel Maude

Fashion isn't everything.
It's the only thing.

The Good, the Fab, and the Ugly is the second stylish and hilarious new novel in the series from the publisher of bestselling Gossip Girl, The Clique, The It Girl, and The A-List. Includes 5 do-it-yourself patterns by real-life fashion label Compai and fashion sketches throughout by the author!

Halloween comes to Winston Prep and the newly named teen fashion label POSEUR introduces this season's must-have accessory: a red-hot handbag called the Trick-or-Treater. But whose design is sweetest? Janie, Petra, Melissa, and Charlotte all insist that it is theirs. You see the problem?

Good thing, then, for the sweetness of revenge. Time to dust off that costume and put your best mask forward. in this season for candy, conflict, and couture.

A Happy Heart (Always Trouble Somewhere Series, Book 5) by Wanda E. Brunstetter

Welcome back to Lancaster County, and join lovable and outrageously rambunctious eleven-year-old Rachel Yoder, as she learns an important lesson about happiness. Ages 9-12

History in the making for younger kids. Current affairs doesn't get any better!

President Barack Obama - A Coloring & Activity Book by N. Wayne Bell All Ages.

Here is a new Fancy Nancy early reader...this time she's an expert on plants. Ages 4-8

Fancy Nancy: Poison Ivy Expert (I Can Read Book 1) by Jane O'Connor, with illustrators Robin Preiss Glasser and Ted Enik

No book list would be complete without the latest from J. K. Rowling:

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is new in the stores as I write this. Here Ms. Rowling expolores mythology with here usual wit and wisdom in a much smaller volume that we have come to expect from here. It is a joy to read.

I had the opportunity to visit, via e-mail with Candida Labrecque about her children's book A Riverside Walk With Grandma. I liked the personalizing features of this little rhyming book. Candi is a retired teacher, musician, mother and grandmother. Here is what she had to say about writing...

Bev: Please tell us a bit about yourself...your journey through life and as a writer

CANDI: As a child, reading was the door that opened, to meet fascinating people and travel to far away lands...Sitting on the "stoop"—the front steps of our house— "Lands and Peoples" volumes and National Geographic magazines provided the magic carpet to travel.

Bev: Who were your favorite authors, and why?

CANDI: I met the "Children of Dickens" in Samuel Crother's volume from Houghton Mifflin Publishers."Stories for Little Children" brought children from around the world to my home. "Mother Goose" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" taught me the rhythm and beauty of rhyme. Then Johanna Spyri's "Heidi", Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women", Mickie Davidson's "Annie Sullivan & Helen Keller" and later Joane Peart's "Orphan Train West" Trilogy became my best friends.

Bev: What kind of books do you read now?

CANDI: Now my preferences include music and personal development as in Ernest Hutcheson's "The Literature of the Piano" and Lawrence Richard's "The Bible Reader's Companion".

Bev: I realize that your grandchildren were your inspiration for "A Riverside Walk With Grandma." How long did it take you to write and illustrate that book?

CANDI: As a mother and grandmother, writing a children's book was a "natural" thing to do. One morning (at 3:30 am) I awoke and went to my desk and wrote and illustrated "A Riverside Walk With Grandma." The pictures, words and rhyme came as fast as i could write them down. It was, I suppose, what we might call a true inspiration.

Bev: Tell me about your decision to self-publish your book.

CANDI: Searching the internet, I found LifeVest Publishing located in Centennial, Colorado. I knew nothing about the publishing industry, but found Lifevest very eay to work with.

Bev: What did you do as a teacher to promote reading?

CANDI: As a parent and teacher, to promote the love of reading, I set a special time aside for reading. At home, sitting on the couch together, reading aloud to my own children and at the dinner table, passing a book around to be read by those who were finished eating (and could read), while waiting for everyone to finish eating and say the "thank-you" grace together. In the classroom it was when the children came into the classroom after lunch, I read to them as they sat at their desks relaxing and listening and enjoying a good book I chose to read to them.

Bev: Are you currently working on another book? I'm sure that you have lots of new ideas. Tell us about that.

CANDI: A book is "milling around" in my head these days, waiting for me to write it down. It will reflect years of living, loving people and loving music. I'll know the right time to pick up a pen...(or type it) and write and even illustrate it. I look forward to that day when the words and ideas just flow together naturally—what fun that will be!

Bev: Do you have any advice for kids who would like to be writers?

CANDI: Read, haunt your public library, take time to dream: What makes you happy? What if....?Who? What?Where?How? When? Why?

Bev: What other thoughts wou ld you like to share with us?

CANDI: What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think, but our ability to love.

Bev: Thank you so much for taking the time to share your ideas with us. I hope the writing inspiration for that new book comes very soon.