Smorgasbord Bookshelf – Meet the Authors 2022 – Personal Recommendations – #Family Allan Hudson, #Children’s Sue Wickstead, #Children’s Bette A. Stevens

This is the  last post in the current series of Meet the Authors with my personal recommendations.

The first author today is Canadian Allan Hudson who writes an eclectic mix of genres including mysteries, short story collections and whose latest novella Family I very much enjoyed.

Meet Allan Hudson

I live in Eastern Canada and I married the greatest gal on earth, Gloria. I have a wonderful son Adam, two great stepsons Mark (Georgette) and Chris (Mireille)Young. Three grandchildren Matthieu, Natasha and Damian.

I’m a very happy man.

I love reading. My mother was a school teacher and taught me to read and write when I was young.

I love jazz music, 70s rock and am a HUGE fan of JJ Cale.

I hope that you will enjoy my stories and thank you for your support.

A selection of books by Allan Hudson

My review for Father January 2022

At the heart of this story is family and its complex relationships. To set the scene the author shares the arrival and progress of the Hill brothers from new immigrants to an established clan of descendents settled into a variety of occupations in the early 1940s Canada.

Times are tough for many and making a little extra cash, even if it is on the illegal side, makes all the difference to a growing family. Many are in the know… but it only takes one disgruntled customer to cause a life changing showdown.

With war waging in Europe, and for more reasons than just patriotism, Tanner and his brothers enlist and find themselves caught up in the campaigns to take strategic targets such as Sicily and the rest of Italy. Tanner’s story is shared in detail as he spends three years moving across Europe as part of the invasion force, facing danger and losses of those close to him. The detail included by the author creates an authentic and compelling coverage of the events during those campaigns, bringing home the effect on the men and women physically and mentally.

Contact with home is rare and a return at the end of the conflict comes with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety about what has changed in the years apart. Tanner has some truths to face that will force him to look at his own actions to enable him to move forward with acceptance and for the future of his family.

A recommended read.

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK – Follow Allan: Goodreads – Website: South Branch Scribbler – Twitter: @hudson_allan

Next a children’s author, Sue Wickstead, who has spent many years as a primary school teacher sharing her love of books and reading. Colourful covers and lovely illustrations enhance the stories.

Meet Sue Wickstead

Award winning books. Shortlisted in the Wishing Shelf Book awards.

Sue Wickstead is a teacher and an author and has written children’s picture books with a bus theme. In addition, she has also written a photographic history book about the real bus behind her story writing.

Her bus stories are about a playbus. Have you ever been on a Playbus?

When Sue’s two children were young, they attended a playgroup on a bus, but not an ordinary bus taking you on a journey, exciting though this is, but a Playbus stuffed full of toys to capture their imagination!

For over 20 years, alongside her teaching career, she worked with the charity, the Bewbush Playbus Association.

As part of the committee she painted the bus, worked in the groups, helped raise the profile of the project and its work and was part of the team involved in raising funds to replace the old bus with a newer vehicle. This led her to write a photographic history book about it.

‘It really was a fun journey to be involved in’, said Sue. The bus really got into her blood and became a work of the heart.

Having written the history book Sue soon found that many children had never been on a bus before, let alone a ‘Playbus’ and they wanted to know more. So, she decided to write a fictional tale, his number plate JJK261, gave him his name.

‘Jay-Jay the Supersonic Bus,’ came out in print in 2014. It is the story behind the original project and is his journey from a scrap-yard to being changed into a playbus for children to play in. From Fact to fiction the bus journey continues.

This story has now been followed by more picture books. ‘A Spooky Tale’ and ‘The Christmas Play Rehearsal’ do indeed have a bus connection as well as links to her teaching journey.

Sue has undertaken events and author bookings and loves to share her stories, she is also proud to be ‘a patron of reading’.

The books have all received 5-star awards from ‘Readers Favourite’.  Sue’s books have also been short-listed in ‘The wishing Shelf’ book awards. With ‘A Spooky Tale’ a silver medal winner.

A selection of  books by Sue Wickstead

My review for Barty Barton February 2022

A lovely story about how even when old and worn out there is still love to be given and received. Very hopeful for those of us of a certain age, who like Barty Barton the bear, are showing signs of wear and tear.

Barty and his fellow stuffed toys have been rather neglected after their young owner grows up and leaves home to start a family of his own.

Luckily his mother comes to the rescue and Barty and his collection of friends go through several rejuvenating processes. They are a delight to read about, offering useful suggestions to those who have favourite worn toys that might enjoy being pampered, and passed along to younger members of the family.

As with all children’s books that I read, I like to see the underlying messages of kindness, love and hope being embedded in the story for a young reader to absorb.

The illustrations are perfect and any child reading, or having the story read to them, will be tempted to stop and discuss in more detail.

Highly recommended.

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon UK – And: Amazon US – More reviews: Goodreads – Website/Blog: Sue Wickstead – Facebook: Stories Sue – Facebook: Teacher Page – Twitter: @JayJayBus – LinkedIn: Sue Wickstead

The final author today, Bette Stevens is an award winning writer of YA, Children’s books and Poetry. I loved Amazing Matilda and a lovely book for all young nature lovers.

Meet Bette A. Stevens

Inspired by nature and human nature, author Bette A. Stevens is a retired elementary and middle school teacher, a wife, mother of two and grandmother of eight. Stevens lives in central Maine with her husband on their 37-acre farmstead where she enjoys reading, writing, gardening, walking and reveling in the beauty of nature. She advocates for children and families, for childhood literacy and for the conservation of monarch butterflies (milkweed is the only plant that monarch caterpillars will eat). The author has also published the photography and poetry collection MY MAINE: Haiku through the Seasons

Stevens’s children’s book, THE TANGRAM ZOO and WORD PUZZLES TOO! was first published in 1997 by Windswept House Publishing, Mt. Desert, ME; a second edition was self-published by the author in 2012. AMAZING MATILDA, Stevens’s second children’s book, self-published in 2012 won a 2013 Purple Dragonfly Book Award (Honorable Mention for Excellence in Children’s Literature – Ages 6 and older category) and also placed #9 on The 2013 Gittle List for Self-published Children’s Picture Books. Stevens has written articles for ECHOES, The Northern Maine Journal of Rural Culture based in Caribou, Maine. In 2013, the author published her first book for the YA/Adult audience: PURE TRASH, a short story of a boy growing up in rural New England in a family whose poverty and alcoholism mark him as a target for bullying by young and old alike. This short story is a prequel to Stevens’s début novel DOG BONE SOUP (KCT International Literary Award Top Finalist 2017).

Books by Bette A. Stevens for Children and adults

My review for Amazing Matilda January 2022

As an adult reading a children’s book, I look for and enjoy how an author shares life lessons embedded within the story. Bette A. Stevens does this very well using animals that a child would be familiar with, as the bearer of these inspiring but simple encouragements to be kind, to be patient and to perservere with life and tasks we are faced with.

Matilda goes through the complex phases in the life of a butterfly and the author shares these not just in the words of the story, but lovely illustrations which would catch a child’s attention and prompt a discussion between child and the storyteller An opportunity to emphasise elements of the tale and explore in more detail the creatures met during Matilda’s  transformation.

Bette Stevens has created a lovely book that any child would treasure and also would engage older members of the family too. Highly recommended.

Read the reviews and buy the books:Amazon US – and : Amazon UK – Follow Bette:Goodreads – Blog:4 Writers and Readers – Twitter:@BetteAStevens

 

Thanks for dropping in today and I hope you will be leaving with some books… thanks Sally.