Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

I got my tip for these books from a regular poster on the fantastic Marvelous Middle Grade Mondays blog hop hosted by Greg Pattrige of Always in the Middle . Check out Greg's blog for a list of additional middle grade reviews. I've been discovering some great reads there.      Title: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise Author: Dan Gemeinhart. Read by Khristine Hvam Publication Info: Macmillan Audio, 2019. 9 hours (original hardback by Henry Holt & Co, 352 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, crisscrossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash. Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished - the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box - she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,6...

Still working my way through the photos from our time in New Zealand! Back in late February, we did a trip from Christchurch down the east coast of South Island all the way to Invercargill, then up to Te Anau, the launching point for our Milford Track tramp. I've picked a few highlights from the trip south, into an area that gets a lot less attention than many parts of the island. We weren't sure what we'd find, but we found more than enough to fill our 4 days Oamaru: Steampunk HQ This trip included not only our 21-y.o. son, but a friend of his as well (I'll call him Friend B). It was in part with the boys in mind that we planned a visit to Steampunk Headquarters. We didn't regret it. At the entrance. Kind of a Mad Max feel.  Out back there were a lot of interesting machines welded together from stray parts and a lot of imagination. Definitely a Mad Max feel.  One of the fun things was the Metagalactic pipe organ, which played sounds picked up from around the univer...

Flashback Friday:    Flashback Friday  is a monthly meme that takes place on the  last Friday of the month . The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it. Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to  Jemima Pett , who has kept it going--visit her blog to  add your name to the list ! Just join in whenever you like,  repost one of your own blog posts , including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month. I found this one from 2014 that seemed appropriate, given that we are definitely on the road, and will be starting across the country about the time this posts up! This story is a merging of two Chuck Wendig challenges. A couple of weeks ago he ran a random title challenge that ...