Posts

Showing posts from January, 2014

Tempting Fate Teaser

Image
"I’ve seen how he looks at ye like the moon rises on yer skin, and how he holds his breath when ye pass by so he doesn’t reach out to pull you in just so he can smell the vanilla in yer hair. He loves ye with the whole of his past, present and future, and it’s a thing someone like me, with such a small life behind and in front of me, can never compete with. Nor do I want to. Because ye deserve a love like that. Ye’re a good person, Saira Elian, and ye should be loved like ye’re the last woman on earth and he’s the last man. Because I guarantee, fer him ye are.”

Reading Out Loud to Kids

Image
I discovered Enid Blyton's books in a used bookstore in Katmandu when I was twelve years old. They were the only English-language kids' books in the place and they opened 1950s English village life to me as if I'd stepped directly into a painting of it. I kept the battered paperbacks as a reminder of a life-changing journey, and then dug one out to read aloud when my oldest son was four. He was wide-eyed, occasionally nervous, and completely captivated by the Five Find-Outers and their dog as they solved mysteries during school holidays in their village of Peterswood. That one book led to a great hunt through used bookstores and Amazon UK to find the rest of the series, and sparked the very best kind of addiction in my now 10-year-old son - reading. So now it's my youngest son's turn. Admittedly we went a bit out of order with him. The Harry Potter series came first and now his favorite games to play usually involve a pair of glasses and a wand. Then the 10-