From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse_at_wisc.edu>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:13:58 -0500

Greetings! I have many suggestions, and I'll probably write again.

Now I'll call your attention to Barbara Juster Esbensen's marvelous Echoes for the Eye: Poems to Celebrate Patterns in Nature. This fine collection of original poems absolutely must come back into print!

I'm well acquainted with the marvelous Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman with Beth Krommes' striking artwork. It, too, must be available, and it is, at least for now.

However, Echoes for the Eye is essential and important because Esbensen's poems encompass branches, polygons, meanders and circles, as well as spirals. Like Sidman, Esbensen includes an explanation of the Fibonacci series, and that invaluable explanation is located in the front of the book. (Actually, I'm currently looking for two copies of Echoes for the Eye for my own personal use.)

While we mourn Margaret Mahy's death and celebrate her many superb books, I also emphasize the need to have The Changeover back in print. I also hope we can still buy Mahy's picture book The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate.

Other suggestions I've noticed with enormous interest because they represent my wishes, too, include The People Shall Continue by Simon Ortiz and Baby Says by John Steptoe.

THANK YOU to the reader who wrote about Lucie Babbidge's House by Sylvia Cassedy! I think Cassedy was a genius due to her skill for exploring and then articulating the internal elements of Imaginary Play. I can't think of any other novel in which the author has come even close to doing that as successfully and as movingly as Cassedy did in Lucie Babbidge's House. Sylvia Cassedy's novel M.E. and Morton likewise explores the nature of intellectual limitation, as well as imaginary play; it, too, represents the creative work of a genius.

Peace, Ginny

Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse_at_wisc.edu
Received on Tue 24 Jul 2012 04:13:58 PM CDT