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From Amazon:

Sometimes the Devil you know is worse than the Devil you don’t. That’s how Astrid Clarke views her family, especially her father, Richard Clarke. She knew her family was different. She heard her friends telling stories full of hugs, kisses, and encouraging words. That’s a far cry from Astrid’s world, and one she could only dream of. Growing tired of the constant abuse, Astrid decided to fight back. Determined to make a better life for herself, she rebels against her abusive parents, braving their punishments and threats. In doing so, she found a wellspring of inner strength she never thought she had and realized she would walk away from them unbroken.

My Review:

Mary Schmidt

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: Abuse Triggers

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2025

Verified Purchase

Now that you have read my warning about Abuse Triggers, read my review. Sadly, much of this story reads as my own, except I was never rape as a child. If I was, then those are repressed memories, and at my age, I have no desire to remember them. The author writes of her myriad experiences growing up in abusive bad dysfunctional family settings. Her story is heartbreaking at best. The worst is unimaginable. I truly don’t understand how she lived through those years but happy she did. Her life changed with a good man for a husband and children and grandchildren. It comes full circle when they become foster parents to other kids who lived in broken, abusive homes.

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From Amazon:

A short horror story by the multi-award-winning author of Arcadia Falls, The Stage 3 Series, and Gaia’s Game.

The Branchards are a perfectly ordinary family living a perfectly ordinary rural life.
Things aren’t always easy, but they get by.

Young Andy Branchard wishes his older brother and sister wouldn’t pick on him so much, but he does his best to ignore them. He has his forest friends, and he has his creek where he can watch the fish swim up and down all day, so he’s happy enough.

Really, the only part about growing up in the Branchard house he hates are Friday nights, when the family dinner is over and his mother asks the same horrifying question she asks every week.

The question that puts a name to his greatest fear, and to the Branchard family’s deep, dark secret.

My Review:

Top reviews from the United States

• Mary Schmidt5.0 out of 5 stars Scary Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2025 Verified Purchase
• This was a short story filled with more and deeper sadness and anguish that y ou can imagine. Not all families are normal, whatever a normal family is, and this one is utterly terrifying.

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From Amazon:

She was a broken, lost soul without a family and lacking knowledge of what love really was. He was a popular hockey player raised from a family that flourished in love and life. Together they created a friendship with an undeniable bond.

By the age of thirteen, Cathy’s life was already filled with shame, secrets and silence when she attended the birthday party for a fifteen-year-old fellow student at her hometown high school. By the next day, her friendship with fifteen-year-old Jon would be the beginning of an eye-opening experience of faith, trust and the unexplainable gift of promise.

In 1987, Jon told Cathy a list of predictions for the future, predictions she went home and wrote about. In just five short years Cathy found herself living the words that were once said to her. A scenario which played out for decades as the predictions once said to her continued to come true. A heartbreaking experience that sent her searching for answers into clairvoyant abilities and an understanding of a world beyond her own.

A fascinating true story of friendship, faith and clairvoyant abilities.

My Review:

I read this book as I was editing it, and I wrote an editorial review that is in the front of the book. Many things happen to each of us in life, and some are quite tragic. That is this book. Yet, this book is more than that. This book is filled with hope and love. True hope and true love, between others and with the Lord. No matter what was thrown Mellon’s way, she overcame each one, and the story about Jon is true. Regardless of your beliefs, once you read this novel that also includes poetry, you will find yourself questioning your belief system.

Hi Everyone. Forty-Eight Greatest Squirrel Memes is on pre-order and delivered tomorrow! Not much time for pre-orders. Link for book.

Forty-Eight Greatest Squirrel Memes: Book One is a collection of squirrels in various comedic depictions of fun and humor for the entire family. Humor and laughter are good for the human soul, and this collection contains wild squirrels from our backyard, plus other squirrels created by Mary L. Schmidt. Laughter is great for humans as we relieve stress that has built up within ourselves, we breathe in deeper, which gives us more oxygen rich air that helps our brains, organs, and entire bodies. Laughter has been shown to help take one’s mind off pain thereby decreasing pain levels. Humor also helps improve our mood which is good for our mental health. Laughter can help personal relationships and improve family dynamics.  Laughter is a great medicine. Laughter improves the morale with a “feel good” effect during times such as these and the stressors we feel individually and collectively.

Media Kit

Book Title: Viva Violetta & Verdi

Series:  N/A

Author: Howard Jay Smith

Publication Date: January 28th, 2025

Publisher:  Historium Press

Pages: 256

Genre: Historical Fiction

Any Triggers: n/a

Twitter Handle: @cathiedunn @marylschmidt

Instagram Handle: @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #BiographicalHistoricalFiction #Verdi #ClassicalMusic #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBook Club

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/02/blog-tour-viva-violetta-and-verdi-by-howard-jay-smith.html

Book Title and Author Name:

Viva Violetta & Verdi

by Howard Jay Smith

Blurb:

A Love Affair Inspiring the World’s Most Unforgettable Operas:

Experience the intense, lifelong love affair between Giuseppe Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi, the brilliant and seductive soprano who shaped his legacy. As his muse, lover, and wife, Strepponi was the inspiration behind Verdi’s most iconic works, including La Traviata and Aida. Her influence was pivotal, as she became the architect of his creative triumphs and the heart of his operatic genius.

Set against the backdrop of Italy’s Risorgimento, this sweeping novel intertwines their turbulent relationship with the nation’s fierce struggle for independence. Through the heartbreak of three brutal wars, Verdi and Strepponi’s passion, betrayal, and artistic ambition come alive, mirroring the era’s fiery spirit.

Rich with themes of love, power, food, wine, and unrelenting passion, Viva Violetta & Verdi is an unforgettable exploration of art, resilience, and the enduring bond that transformed both an artist and a nation.

Praise for Violetta & Verdi:

“A stunning, significant book…that is rich, lush and drenched in knowledge. It is nothing less than a gift.” – Sheila Weller

“Smith’s historic drama embraces universal themes of class and religious persecution, and weaves gorgeous language with an intimate knowledge of Italian food, music, and political hypocrisy that contemporary readers will find irresistible.” – ​Jessica Keener

“Viva Violetta & Verdi is a well-researched love letter to Verdi; fans are sure to love.” – Leslie Zemeckis

“Perfection. You are right there, inhaling and breathing in the words, the smell, and each piece of music. Bravo. It is both a love song and a love letter to the irrefutable power of Verdi’s muse, Violetta.” – Amy Ferris

Viva Violetta & Verdi

The Shofar

After Verdi and I settled into our seats in Box Thirteen, I opened the Rabbi’s package. Inside, wrapped in a blue velvet cloth bag was a letter, a silk scarf and the very shofar Verdi had admired in Busseto. I handed Verdi the ram’s horn and said, “This is a gift to you from Rabbi Spinoziano.”

Verdi was stunned. He held the shofar in his hands as delicately as if it were a sacred relic. “I can’t believe he gave me this. What do I do? How do I play it?”

“Oh, there are instructions,” I told him and then reading from the note, “The Rabbi writes, ‘Consider your destiny in this era of travail. When the time comes to destroy the walls of our enemies and bring down the emperors who oppress us, put your lips together and blow. If we are fortunate, your clarion calls will succeed. And if you fail, let’s hope reinforcements arrive in time to save us all.’”

“That’s it?  That’s all? Your rabbi is quite the politician, isn’t he? And a comedian too. Yet when I was at your sinagoga I had the impression, that the shofar was only used for sacred rituals?”

“Sacred?” I laughed, “Rabbi Spinoziano is much like Giuseppe Mazzini, both are first and foremost humanists. To him, the only truly sacred things are those actions which serve to uplift and support people: love, truth, justice. Objects and rituals are not sacred. A horn is just a horn. It had one purpose when its first owner, the ram, lived, and another purpose when it was transformed into a musical instrument. According to the rabbi, only two types of people imbue these objects and the rituals surrounding them with purported magical powers. The first are the superstitious and weak-minded, and the second are the dictators and tyrants who exploit the fears of the first group so as to rule over them.”

“Your rabbi is a bit of a revolutionary too, eh?”

“Of course, being an outlier is the essence of being a Hebrew in a Christian world. Remember, fundamental to Judaism is our belief in the rule of law and equal justice for all – concepts that don’t exists when emperors, kings have some made up divine right to rule as they please. Our very existence is a thorn pricking the hand of the aristocracy and the clergy. And when it comes to taking up arms against the empire, trust me, the Jews of Italy are there.”

“Ah, I see, but doesn’t the shofar have a special place in your High Holidays?

“Yes, of course.  But it’s not magic. It’s a horn, just a horn used to call the congregation together in an age before clocks or brass trumpets came into existence.”

“How very different from our churches where you cannot help but trip over one holy relic or another, bought and sold by the clerics. Does the good rabbi at least give any detailed instructions about how to play it?”

“Beyond putting your lips together? No. It takes some practice – just like we all learned to shoot rabbits with a hunting rifle growing up. That’s all.”

“And what’s that he sent you?” Verdi asked.

I pulled the scarf out of the package. It was a hand woven one made of pure white silk with some blue line running horizontally near the two ends. “It looks like a tallit, but it’s not,” I said as I put it on. The blue even matched that of my ever-present fedora. I looked further in the note to see if there was an explanation.

“What’s a tallit?” Verdi asked. “Is it that prayer shawl I saw the rabbi wearing at your wedding?”

I nodded, then read aloud from the rabbi’s note. “Dario, an apple does not fall far from the tree whence it came, but being round like a matzo ball, it can roll far away before being eaten by some beast. So, my friend, when in the silk weavers’ market of Ceneda, I found this scarf, one which reminds me of a tallit, but is not, I thought of you. May its gentle cloth keep you warm throughout your many travels while always reminding you of your roots.” 

“You get a scarf; I get an enigma. That’s it?”

“There’s nothing more in here about the shofar. The rest of his letter is about our American cousin, Emanuele Conegliano, Mozart’s librettist, the one you know as Lorenzo Da Ponte.”

“Da Ponte? Is he still around?”

“No, apparently not. That’s what the letter reports. It seems that my cousin, the former Abbé Lorenzo Da Ponte, passed away in August of a year ago and was buried beside his wife, Celestina, in the graveyard of St. Patrick’s. He was eighty-nine, and had outlived Mozart by nearly fifty years. Imagine that.”

“Remarkable, what a life he led,” said Verdi. “Our opera world is deeply indebted to him and sadly few today recognize his genius. Without Da Ponte, there’d be no Mozart. Da Ponte’s home in Ceneda ought to be a shrine.”

“Truly, I added, “But not only did he create the libretti for Mozart’s best operas, he is the man who also introduced opera to America and started the first two theaters there in New York City. But there’s more here. Listen to this: The rabbi’s letter goes on to say that a month after his Catholic funeral, the Hebrew friends of Emanuele Conegliano and his family, secretly and out of sight of authorities, removed those coffins from St. Patrick’s and reburied them in the shade of an elm tree in the Jewish Cemetery of Shearith Israel. There, Emanuele and Celestina Conegliano will spend eternity in the company of their fellow Hebrew brethren in a land where the rule of law prevails over kings and their conspirators.”

This news about the secret reburial stunned Verdi to the core, even though I had long ago described to him all about Da Ponte’s life as a crypto-Jew.

“They did that? They actually did that? They reburied him? And in secret?”

“Yes, it was what he wanted. He told me that himself when I was there. He even showed me the spot he had picked out.”

“So, Da Ponte really did live a life behind masks and capes?”

“Yes, it was his solution to living in a world that is hostile to Hebrews.”

“And only in death could he return to himself?”

“Yes. It is true. He had to die to become a Jew again.”

“That’s tragic and a story worthy of an opera in and of itself. One I’d call The Secret Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte.”

“Yes, indeed. But he will be a Jew for eternity,” I said.

“Eternity?” Verdi laughed for the first time that day. “I don’t believe in that Heaven and Hell nonsense. When you’re dead, you’re dead, there’s no turning back.”

Verdi lifted the shofar up to his lips, but when he blew into it, naught came out except his sputtering. His eyes watered, he tried again, nothing. And then the tears began to flow. Verdi dropped the shofar onto the floor and then began to sob uncontrollable.

“Icilio!” he wailed, “Icilio! Why? Why?” Verdi buried his face in his hands and the tears flowed as wildly and fierce as those once portrayed in Violetta’s Lament.

**********

            When the first act of Oberto ended with its curtain drop and a smashingly good round of applause, Verdi looked at me, his face a wild map of emotions. “Wait here. I have to see Margherita.”

Verdi scrambled out of our box and raced down the stairs until he reached the exit doors. He left La Scala at a gallop and then ran the half-dozen blocks all of the way back to his apartment on Via San Simeone. There, breathless, he found Margherita in the company of my Isabella, who was of course wearing that blue turquoise gown and the matching jacket.

Since the sudden death of Icilio four weeks earlier from a mysterious fever, Margherita had been inconsolable. Her grief had been so intense that not only was she unable to join us for the premiere, she had scarcely left their home since the funeral. And my Isabella, whose innate sense of empathy and compassion was unrivaled, insisted on staying by her side. If anyone understood, tragedy, it was my bride. She knew when to speak, when to be silent, when to listen and when to simply share tears. It went without saying that Isabella, who understood better than most what was truly important in our lives, would easily surrender the prospect of seeing her first opera to be in support and to be able console, Margherita.

Verdi hugged his wife in a long lingering moment of shared grief and then whispered, “It’s going well. A success, so far.” 

Margherita could only manage the tiniest of smiles before collapsing again in tears.

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bxyr2d

Author Bio:

Howard Jay Smith is an award-winning writer from Santa Barbara, California.

VIVA VIOLETTA & VERDI, is his third novel in his series on great composers, including BEETHOVEN IN LOVE; OPUS 139 and MEETING MOZART: FROM THE SECRET DIARIES OF LORENZO DA PONTE.

His other books include OPENING THE DOORS TO HOLLYWOOD (Random House) and JOHN GARDNER: AN INTERVIEW (New London Press). He was recently awarded a Profant Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Excellence in Writing.

Smith is a former two-time Bread Loaf Scholar and three-time Washington, D.C. Commission for the Arts Fellow, who taught for many years in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program and has lectured nationally. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, American Heritage Magazine, the Beethoven Journal, Horizon Magazine, Fig Tree Press, the Journal of the Writers Guild of America, the Ojai Quarterly, and numerous trade publications. While an executive at the ABC Television, Embassy TV, and Academy Home Entertainment he worked on numerous film, television, radio and commercial projects.

He serves on the board of directors of the Santa Barbara Symphony and is a member of the American Beethoven Society.

Author Links:

Website: https://www.historiumpress.com/howard-jay-smith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009914652603

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Howard-Jay-Smith/author/B072FL7Y6P

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14208462.Howard_Jay_Smith

Book Link

From Amazon:

Award-winning author, Felix Alexander returns with his third collection of love letters and poems, and the fourth installment in the Forever Poetic Series. A saga about missed chances, unrequited love, longing and hope, and never leaving anything unsaid.

The book begins with a series of love letters confessing a secret admiration that slowly evolves into unrequited love. Each letter paints love in different colors, Every page is a canvas of Alexander’s poetic mastery. Although sprinkled with the occasional verse in the first few letters the book begins to alternate between letters and poetry a third of the way in. Readers are taken on a gondola ride of poetry and prose that reveals the depth of a romantic’s affections.

Lovers of literary romance, romantic poetry, and sweet love are sure to be touched profoundly by this collection and inspired to believe in love.

My Review:

This book contains love letters and love poetry that is uniquely written. The words are sensual and evocative, and love is felt and seen in every aspect, from warm raindrops to light from above. The author writes of unrequited love as well, and he’s content with unrequited love if that is all he’s allowed. This book is so much more than I can express in this review. The love he feels is all consuming and never stops, only keeps building upon each verse.

Book Title: The Midnight of Eights

Series: The Island of Angels (This is book 2 of 2. The first book is called The Mark of the Salamander. Book 2 is written as a stand-alone, or can be read after reading book 1.)

Author: Justin Newland

Publication Date: 28^th October 2024

Publisher: The Book Guild

Page Length: 288

Genre: Historical Fiction

Any Triggers: n/a

Twitter Handle: @cathiedunn @MaryLSchmidt

Instagram Handle: @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #ElizabethanFiction #AgeOfDiscovery #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/02/blog-tour-the-midnight-of-eights-by-justin-newland.html

Book Title and Author Name:

The Midnight of Eights

by Justin Newland

Blurb:

1580.

Nelan Michaels docks at Plymouth after sailing around the world aboard the Golden Hind. He seeks only to master his mystical powers – the mark of the salamander, that mysterious spirit of fire – and reunite with his beloved Eleanor.

After delivering a message to Francis Walsingham, he’s recruited into the service of the Queen’s spymaster, where his astral abilities help him to predict and thwart future plots against the realm.

But in 1588, the Spanish Armada threatens England’s shores.

So how could the fledgling navy of a small, misty isle on the edge of mainland Europe repulse the greatest fleet in the world?

Was the Queen right when she claimed it was divine intervention, saying, ‘He blew with His winds, and they were scattered!’?

Or was it an entirely different intervention – the extraordinary conjunction of coincidences that Nelan’s astral powers brought to bear on that fateful Midnight of Eights?

Chapter 1: The Plough Head

The village of Mortlake, near London, England

14^th October 1580

… Turning his back on the derelict site, he headed upriver towards a large ramshackle mansion, the house of Dr John Dee, the renowned astrologer to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Nelan desperately wanted to renew his acquaintance with the man, but he had a message from Admiral Drake to deliver, so a reunion would have to wait.

He headed east. The smells and sight of the fields and meadows were pleasantly familiar. A fox darted across the stubbled field, stared at him, and sniffed the dank air as if to ask, ‘Who is this who disturbs the peace of the hedgerow?’ Another fox stalked the roof of his destination, Barn Elms – a black metal weather vane, a clue to the nature of its distinguished owner.

It rained and he sought shelter beneath a plane tree. As he dismounted, he nearly tripped on a piece of wood jutting out of the ground. He reached down to grab it. His gloved hands slipped off the muddy surface of the wood. He tried pulling it out of the sodden earth, but it held fast. It was a piece of rotting oak.

Something nudged him. Take a second glance. Lo-and-behold, it was the curved handle of a plough. He dug around it until his blade struck metal. Now he had to uncover all of it. With the evening shadows closing in, he knelt down, removed his gloves and felt the surface with his palms. A piece of iron was attached to the wooden handle. Ah! A plough head. Pulling it free, it fractured in two. As he wrenched the other half from the soil, it released an odour as foul as the devil’s breath.

Ignoring the odious smell, he felt around the moist earth and found a bone. His heart missed a beat. What was this – a day of graves? If so, whose? Too small to be human. He unearthed the skeleton of a bird. It had a hooked beak, so a bird of prey. With a bell and leather thongs attached to each leg, it was a falcon, belled and jessed.

A falcon and a plough head made strange bedfellows. The jessed young bird must have got loose from its straps and died. Was he, Nelan, jessed to the straps of his past, forever strangled by his unfortunate history? Would he ever cut them loose?

It surprised him that the plough head had been left to rot, because carpenters would normally resharpen and repair the wood. When he worked as an apprentice blacksmith, he’d often reforge old plough head irons. Holding the bones in his hand, he turned it over in his mind; the straps and the share, the bird and the bell, the plough head and the falcon, belled and jessed. These were clues, but to what?

In the distance, he heard the rumble of cart wheels. Looking through the hazy light drizzle, he saw only the meadow and the manor house. Yet he could hear them trundling over cobblestones as clear as if he stood in the middle of a bustling city street. Then he heard the snort of an ox. He was hearing and seeing things that weren’t there. What was happening?

Then he realised. The cart and the ox were not of this world. No, they belonged to the other world. During his voyage around the globe, Nelan had learned how to look through the veil and peer into that mysterious, astral realm. Beneath the middle finger on his right hand were three wavy lines, like three letter S’s – the mark of the salamander. Sometimes, when he rubbed the lines, a vision unfolded before his astonished eyes. This time, the vision pressed itself upon him of its own accord.

In it, a man dressed in white robes stood in the ox cart. He was surrounded by pikemen and pipes, louts and lutes. There was festivity, and there was terror. As the great bell tolled, the crowd chanted,

You’re gonna be seen,

On the tree that’s ne’er green!

Nelan’s horse neighed and tossed its head, jolting him out of the vision. He felt chills down his spine. What’s a tree that’s never green?

Buy Links:

Universal Buy Link: https://mybook.to/TheMidnightofEights

Author Website (where buyer can enter a dedication): https://www.justinnewland.com/the-midnight-of-eights~193

Wordery (for free UK delivery): https://wordery.com/the-midnight-of-eights-justin-newland-9781835740330  

Barnes and Noble (US): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-midnight-of-eights-justin-newland/1146325263?ean=2940185990643

Waterstones (UK): https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-midnight-of-eights/justin-newland/9781835740330

Kobo (International): https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-midnight-of-eights

Saxo (DK): https://www.saxo.com/dk/the-midnight-of-eights_bog_9781835740330

Kindle Unlimited:

Author Bio:

Justin Newland’s novels represent an innovative blend of genres from historical adventure to supernatural thriller and magical realism.

Undeterred by the award of a Maths Doctorate, he conceived his debut novel, The Genes of Isis (ISBN 9781789014860, Matador, 2018), an epic fantasy set under Ancient Egyptian skies.

His second book, The Old Dragon’s Head (ISBN 9781789015829, Matador, 2018), and is set in Ming Dynasty China in the shadows of the Great Wall.

Set during the Great Enlightenment, The Coronation (ISBN 9781838591885, Matador, 2019)speculates on the genesis of the most important event in the modern world – the Industrial Revolution.

The Abdication (ISBN 9781800463950, Matador, 2021) is a mystery thriller in which a young woman confronts her faith in a higher purpose and what it means to abdicate that faith.

The Mark of the Salamander (ISBN 9781915853271, Book Guild, 2023), is the first in a two-book series, The Island of Angels. Set in the Elizabethan era, it tells the epic tale of England’s coming of age.

The latest is The Midnight of Eights (ISBN 9781835740 330, Book Guild, 2024), the second in The Island of Angels series, which charts the uncanny coincidences of time and tide that culminated in the repulse of the Spanish Armada.

His work in progress is The Spirit of the Times which explores the events of the 14^th Century featuring an unlikely cast of the Silk Road, Genghis Khan, the Black Plague, and a nursery rhyme that begins ‘Ring a-ring a-roses’.

Author, speaker and broadcaster, Justin gives talks to historical associations and libraries, appears on LitFest panels, and enjoys giving radio interviews. He lives with his partner in plain sight of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England.

Author Links:

Website: https://www.justinnewland.com/

Twitter: https://x.com/JustinNewland53

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justin.newland.author/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-newland-b393aa28/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjustinnewland/

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/justin-newland

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/jnewland

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Justin-Newland/author/B06WRQVLT8

Book Link

From Amazon:

Sporting a new prosthesis and the emotional scars that go with it, former detective and reluctant psychic Grace Willis books a short stay in Black Hollow in search of peace–instead, she finds a body. With her own career derailed, she’ll team up with the handsome Sheriff Ewan Weaver to root out the methodical killer terrorizing his small town. But can Grace learn to harness the visions she’s always suppressed before she becomes the next victim?

My Review:

Talk about a great book! This book is terrific and the best one I’ve read yet by Mettner. She dove right in with this rape/murder/mystery/love story. I felt each emotion as I read along. That means the book is great to be able to elicit strong feelings in the reader. Mettner has proven she can outdo any type of love story mixed with anything she wants to toss in. Five shiny gold stars.

Book Link

From Amazon:

Discover five very curious fantastical Miso Mice on their quest to find The Answer Book, given to them by a magical button found floating out of a treasure chest! Their travels take them on exciting galactic adventures with Kaame, the sea horse riding sprite, and the Zodiac Girls who help starfish go skyward, but beware, as they cross paths with the devious Lobsta Clamdestino!

My Review:

This was a totally fun and adorable story! Kids will love it and parents will laugh along as they read a lot about fantasy beings in the universe. This book opens up kids minds into thinking outside the box and to seek other answers to questions. A wonderful story that helps to bring kids out of themselves and into the present in a communicative fashion!