A few nice book reviews for young adults images I found:

Day 123/365 – Coraline in 3D


Image by Kevin H.
I’d never heard of Neil Gaiman’s book ‘Coraline’ before, but when Erin got all excited that they were making a movie about it and gave me a quick synopsis of the story, I figured I had to see it as well. I’m glad I did. And I’m even more glad that I saw it in 3D.

I think the first 3D movie I ever saw was the old black & white monster movie ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon.’ When I was a kid the high school my brother and sisters attended had a screening of it one weekend as a fundraiser. I still remember this arm sticking straight out of the screen and in my face.

The 3D they use in ‘Coraline’ is quite a bit different than the old school variety, as are the glasses. Instead of white cardboard frames with red and blue lenses, the new 3D (called Real 3D) glasses look sort of like Ray Ban wayfarer sunglasses. There don’t seem to be as many gimmicky ‘comin’ right at ya’ moments in the modern 3D movies either, although there was a scene with a sewing needle early in ‘Coraline’ that had me drawing back in my seat.

Watching a modern 3D movie such as ‘Coraline’ is a lot like watching one of those old Viewmaster Viewer paper discs that has been turned into a movie. The depth of field and illusion of distance are amazing. In particular, there is a recurring scene in ‘Coraline’ involving a secret tunnel that just seems to stretch on and on and on far beyond the wall of the movie theater.

‘Coraline’ strikes me as being more of an adult fable than a kid’s story. Parts of it are quite creepy, nightmare-fuel and there is a mildly racy bit involving a buxom old burlesque/cabaret performer prancing about in pasties and a thong that I’m sure had some parents in the audience second-guessing themselves. The litle boys sitting behind me thought it was hilarious, though.

The story is captivating, as are the characters. Coraline and her negligent, ‘please leave me alone/I’m busy’ parents have just moved into a strange old house with strange old neighbors and it doesn’t take long for our spunky young heroine to discover that the house contains a passage to an alternate world peopled with an ‘other’ mother and ‘other’ father (not to mention ‘other’ neighbors) that are attentive and indulgent.

It seems at first as though this alternate world holds everything Coraline could want and nothing she doesn’t. If only they didn’t have those creepy buttons for eyes. And therein hangs the tale. I really enjoyed the movie and now I want to get my hands on a copy of the book. I’m sure it will be even better than the movie, despite the fact that it’s only in 2D.

(February 8, 2009)

OBAMA: COMMUNIST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES


Image by SS&SS
THIS IS A MUST READ IF YOU ARE TO UNDERSTAND THIS ADMINISTRATIONS POLICYS ARE FULLY BASED ON A SOCIALIST/MARXIST SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
THIS MAN IS A COMMUNIST THROUGH AND THROUGH
ALSO READ THE PREVIOUS POST TO THIS ONE

The Obama Vision

Book review of: RADICAL-IN-CHIEF BY STANLEY KURTZ, National Review

November 15, 2010
by Ronald Radosh

The charge by some conservatives that President Obama was and indeed still is a socialist has been met with disbelief or brushed aside as irrelevant by our liberal elites, most consequentially by the media. They have assigned it to the land of the “wing-nuts.” Even the conservative writer Andrew Ferguson could not resist throwing in a gratuitous remark about Stanley Kurtz’s new book, Radical-in-Chief, in a recent issue of The Weekly Standard, arguing that “there is, indeed, a name for the beliefs that motivate President Obama, but it’s not . . . even socialism. It’s liberalism!” For Ferguson, “unchecked liberalism . . . is worrisome enough.”

I have to admit that before reading and evaluating the mountain of evidence Kurtz presents in his book, I too was skeptical of the charge, regarding it as a somewhat overheated smear word that Obama’s opponents liked to throw out in the heat of political debate. It held no more water with me than did the epithets of “fascist,” “Nazi,” and “un-American” hurled at Obama by his angriest enemies. But Kurtz’s book leads me to the inescapable conclusion that indeed Barack Obama started out his adult life as a socialist, functioned within socialism’s orbit for decades, owes much of his political rise to the socialist community, and has never repudiated the ideology he adopted so long ago.

Kurtz claims that when he began research for his book he knew that Obama had had some associations with radicals like Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Chicago, but was dubious about the socialist label. These associations were brushed off by Obama and his supporters with such arguments as that he hardly knew Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, and, in any event, was only eight years old when the couple were engaging in their violent Weathermen activities. As for Wright, well, Obama just wasn’t in church when the reverend was damning America.

Kurtz wanted to find out whether there was anything behind the socialist charge by digging deeper and tracing Obama’s path to the presidency. He approached his subject as any good historian would, by going to the primary sources, looking at the records and internal publications of the many groups and organizations that Obama had been associated with: the Socialist Scholars Conference, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, ACORN, the Black Theology Project, the Harold Washington mayoral administration, the Midwest Academy, the New American Movement, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the Woods Charitable Fund.

Kurtz traces Obama’s exposure to socialist politics and circles back to the early 1980s, when he was a student at Columbia University. A pivotal experience was Obama’s attendance at the 1983 and 1984 Socialist Scholars Conference (SSC) held in New York’s Cooper Union. (This was a world I was most familiar with. At the time, I was on the SSC’s planning committee, which was based at the sociology department of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.) The SSC was attended by enthusiastic members of various socialist sects; there was in fact little scholarly about it. Most of the sessions addressed various pressing political questions: the state of rebellion in Central America, the strategies for moving America towards socialism, etc. It would be interesting to know what sessions Obama attended and why he went to it in the first place. After all, most attendees were activists, committed socialist intellectuals, or both.

The answers would never be brought forth, because no one in the media sought to ask him about it. Kurtz reports that Obama did address it once, in an offhand manner. In his bestselling 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote that while living in New York, he engaged in political discussions that “came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union. . . . [They were among] the many diversions New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or ice-skating at Rockefeller Center.” Since it was so inconsequential, why did Obama take care to mention it? Perhaps the ambitious Obama knew that since he had registered for it in his own name, someone might find he had attended; so “why not,” Kurtz writes, “acknowledge the fact in such a way as to minimize attention and defuse the power of eventual revelation?”

But, as Kurtz shows, after the SSC, where Obama was exposed to both Black Liberation theology and community organizing, he decided to leave the field of foreign relations and nuclear disarmament — about which he had written a now well-known article — and instead started on the new career path of community organizing. Moreover, the speaker at one of the major sessions developed the theoretical concept of working for “socialist incubators,” the effort to combine different community groups into one national movement, which would then “democratize control of major social, economic and political institutions.” This was not an old-style nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy; it was, rather, an attempt to achieve socialism from below. The theorist was Peter Dreier, who later became a major strategist for ACORN and, during the 2008 campaign, an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama. These groups, or “incubators,” would push the U.S. towards socialism and socialist programs like universal single-payer health care.

Dreier’s theory coincided with the popular view of the French Marxist André Gorz, who developed the concept of working for “transitional” or “non-reformist reforms,” seemingly small steps that would help destroy market capitalism and build the basis for complete structural change and the adoption of a socialist economy in Western societies. When a crisis finally occurred, especially a “fiscal crisis of the state,” the moment would be ripe to transform the economy into a publicly owned statist entity.

As the years went by, and Barack Obama moved from community organizing to Harvard Law and then back to Chicago, Kurtz shows that one thing remained constant: Obama continued to move in the same socialist circles that he had first come across at the SSC at Cooper Union. It was there that he probably heard a young Cornel West talk at a panel on race and class in Marxism, and was introduced to the father of Black Liberation theology, James Cone, the mentor to a minister named Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It was also at the SSC that he most likely came across a leader of Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialists of America, the Yugoslav-born Bogdan Denitch, who wrote an essay on the importance of Harold Washington’s mayoral campaign in Chicago, in uniting the black and white Left in a new class politics that would produce victory and socialist momentum.

These ideas and theories motivated Obama and helped him choose his own career path — that of community organizing as the way to lead a coalition of blacks, whites, and Hispanics to create a socialist “redefinition” of America, with one caveat: The concept and advocacy of socialism as the final goal would consciously be hidden from sight. As Kurtz reveals, the socialist theorists openly talked about what they called “stealth socialism” or “incremental radicalism,” small steps that move the nation forward until the ultimate goal of a socialist transformation is obtained. One moves apparently without an ideological plan, but working for measures that will end with an irreversible move to a statist economy based on public control through groups run by labor and community organizations. As Kurtz writes: “Obama’s college socialism, the influence of socialist conferences on his career, his choice of a profession dominated by socialists, and his extensive alliances with the most influential stealth-socialist community organizers in the country give the game away. Obama has adopted the gradualist socialist strategy of his mentors. . . . Eventually, this will transform American capitalism into something resembling a socialist-inspired Scandinavian welfare state.”

With this fundamental transformation finally obtained, wealth would be redistributed from individuals and businesses to the state and especially to the public-employee unions, which would effectively run state and national governments. Seemingly minor adjustments would be the effective “non-reformist reforms” advocated by Gorz and others, and would eventually undermine the current system. When Michelle Obama inadvertently let the cat out of the bag and told an audience that her husband was essentially a community organizer using politics to achieve the ends he always wanted, she confirmed Kurtz’s analysis.

All of this fit well with the political strategy developed by the late Michael Harrington, the last socialist leader of national prominence since Norman Thomas; Harrington’s followers play a major role in national government and the Democratic party today. Harrington favored what I call Browderism without Browder and the old Soviet tie; i.e., working in the Democratic party with non-socialists, helping to transform it into, in effect, an “invisible social democracy.” The so-called Democratic Left — under the guidance of conscious socialists who assumed leadership positions in various mass movements including unions, women’s groups, and community organizations — would help to develop their programs until all converged to create the structural socialist transformation of society.

Readers of Kurtz’s book will see example after example of how Obama’s otherwise inexplicable actions — such as pushing health care ahead of jobs in a time of economic downturn — make perfect sense if he is acting according to the theories and programs of the mentors he took along with him when he moved into the political arena. By keeping his real views hidden — the chosen policy of the descendants of Saul Alinsky who argue for masking socialist convictions — the political organizers can push the country in a direction it may not want.

Once one realizes that this is indeed Obama’s chosen course, it becomes clear why, during the campaign, he went out of his way to downplay and deny his actual close involvement over the years with major socialist players. In his important and detailed chapter on ACORN, for example, Kurtz spells out better than anyone has how the group fought tooth and nail to get banks to lower lending standards and to provide loans for those without good credit and even without any demonstrable ability to pay a mortgage. The housing group, despite its many denials, is shown by Kurtz to be a major factor in the development of the subprime-lending spree that crashed the housing bubble. ACORN pressured the banks by pressuring the Clinton administration and working with HUD secretary Henry Cisneros. Together, they used a direct-action campaign to draw the entire financial system into unwise lending schemes that helped foment today’s housing crisis.

Not only did Obama work closely with ACORN, he also cooperated intimately with the quasi-socialist Midwest Academy. He had lengthy and sustained relationships with both Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers — who, Kurtz demonstrates, knew and worked with Obama way before anyone else imagined. Ayers appointed him to boards that, in turn, quickly acted under Obama’s leadership to fund Ayers’s extremist and Marxist educational programs, as well as the radical projects of his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

Thus does Obama’s past explain his policies today. He adopted the ACORN leaders’ strategy of transforming the economy through expanding entitlements, and combined it with Michael Harrington’s plan to realign American politics through polarizing the electorate along class lines. By radicalizing the Democratic party — a goal already pretty much accomplished — he would have the ability, once in power, to push America to a left-wing “social democracy” in which business would be demonized. (This strategy is very much in evidence in the 2010 midterm campaign, with the administration’s noxious attack on the Chamber of Commerce.)

As for health care, Kurtz speculates that Obama hopes that if Republicans succeed in repealing the new law, the repeal will ignite a political movement of the Left that will further radicalize the Democratic party — a class-based strategy that would put into effect Harrington’s “realignment,” in which, finally, the poor and the educated middle classes would push the country to socialism. Thus public-employee unions, minorities, and the poor would stop the “haves” from running the country, and — as Obama told Joe the Plumber in that eventful campaign stop in 2008 — we would move to fairness by redistributing the wealth to those who deserve it and don’t have what they need. In the Obama administration, we have Saul Alinsky, Richard Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven’s advocacy of pushing the system to its limits united with ACORN’s stealth socialism and socialist incubation.

Stanley Kurtz succeeds, then, in showing the “consistency of [Obama’s] convictions.” Beginning in his college days, and possibly even in late high school, Obama gravitated towards socialism as the answer for America. His entire political advance depended upon the backing, support, and work of the Chicago socialist community. It was a stealth-socialist circle, carefully hidden from the public, but now unearthed brilliantly by Kurtz. With a “thoroughgoing pattern of deception,” he misled the American people into believing that he was a post-ideological pragmatist. “Obama has made concerted efforts to hide his socialist convictions from the voters who put him in office,” in a “systematic deception” that “corrodes democracy itself.”

For these reasons, Stanley Kurtz has written what I believe is the most important political book in years. I would go so far as to say that had he or someone else done this work during the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama would not have been elected president — because it would have been clear that Obama is simply not who he claimed to be. During the election, Obama presented himself as a post-partisan figure who would unite the country and work with Republicans to find practical solutions to America’s problems. He would heal the country’s racial wounds. Instead, he has divided us. At a time when Europe is digging itself out from under the weight of its social-democratic policies, Obama is pushing us in that direction: out-of-control deficits, unsustainable entitlements, high taxes, and a sluggish economy. That is not where the American people want to go.

Ronald Radosh is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute; Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York, and the author of many books, including "The Rosenberg File;" "Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996," and most recently, "Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left."

www.hudson.org/

progressive/liberalism explained for the simple minded (other liberals)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZrqdZFFb5c&feature=related

OOPS I THINK THE SHINE IS OFF THE PEACH ………..IT’S ABOUT TIME


Image by SS&SS
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 19% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20 (see trends).

Today’s numbers reflect the lowest level of Strong Approval yet recorded for this president. There has been a sharp decline in enthusiasm among liberal voters.

Currently, just 37% of liberals Strongly Approve of the president’s performance. That’s down from 63% a year ago, 57% at the beginning of 2011, and 52% a week ago. Some liberal commentators have expressed disappointment with the president over the extension of the Bush tax cuts, the military action in Libya, and, most recently, the budget deal to avert a partial shutdown of the federal government. While liberal enthusiasm may be declining, 57% of voters believe the president is more liberal than they are.

By a 48% to 37% margin, voters recognize that to significantly cut government spending would require making major changes in National Security, Social Security, and Medicare. Those items make up a majority of all federal spending.

Consumer confidence remains steady. Just 31% rate their own personal finances as good or excellent. Overall, 22% say their finances are getting better while 46% say the opposite.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 44% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. Fifty-five percent (55%) disapprove.

Even though enthusiasm is down, 84% of liberal voters still approve of the president’s performance. So do 54% of moderate voters. However, 86% of conservatives disapprove.

Sixty-one percent (61%) believe that enforcing immigration laws would reduce poverty.

Forty-seven percent (47%) have some confidence in the stability of the U.S. banking system.

Most voters continue to favor repeal of last year’s new health care law.

A Wall Street Journal profile called Scott Rasmussen "America’s Insurgent Pollster." The Washington Post calls him "a driving force in American politics." If you’d like Scott to speak at your conference or event, contact Premiere Speakers Bureau. You can also follow Scott on Facebook.

In a book released last year, Scott Rasmussen observed that, "The gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century." He added that "The American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or the center. They want to govern themselves." In Search of Self-Governance is available at Amazon.com.

MAD AS HELL: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System, by Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen, can be ordered at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders and other outlets. It’s also available in bookstores everywhere.

It is important to remember that the Rasmussen Reports job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters. Some other firms base their approval ratings on samples of all adults. President Obama’s numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters. That’s because some of the president’s most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote. It is also important to check the details of question wording when comparing approval ratings from different firms.

Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology). Pollsters for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have cited our "unchallenged record for both integrity and accuracy."

The Pew Center noted that Rasmussen Reports beat traditional media in covering Scott Brown’s upset win in Massachusetts earlier this year: "It was polling-not journalistic reporting-that caught the wave in the race to succeed Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy." Rasmussen Reports was also the first to show Joe Sestak catching Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary race last year.

Once again in 2010, Rasmussen Reports polling provided an accurate preview of Election Night outcomes. See how we did.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, “This was one tough election to poll and forecast. Rasmussen Reports caught the major trends of the election year nationally and in most states.”

In December 2009, a full 11 months before Election Day. A Democratic strategist concluded that if the Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot data was accurate, Republicans would gain 62 seats in the House during the 2010 elections. Other polls at the time suggested the Democrats would retain a comfortable majority. The Republicans gained 63 seats in the 2010 elections.

Rasmussen’s final 2010 projections were published in the Wall Street Journal. Scott Rasmussen noted that “it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn’t win, the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.”

In the 2009 New Jersey Governor’s race, automated polls tended to be more accurate than operator-assisted polling techniques. On reviewing the state polling results from 2009, Mickey Kaus offered this assessment, "If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the prestigious N.Y. Times, go with Rasmussen!"

In 2008, Obama won 53%-46% and our final poll showed Obama winning 52% to 46%. While we were pleased with the final result, Rasmussen Reports was especially pleased with the stability of our results. On every single day for the last six weeks of the campaign, our daily tracking showed Obama with a stable and solid lead attracting more than 50% of the vote.

In 2004 George W. Bush received 50.7% of the vote while John Kerry earned 48.3%. Rasmussen Reports polling projected that Bush would win 50.2% to 48.5%. We were the only firm to project both candidates’ totals within half a percentage point by (see our 2004 results).

Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. To reach those who have abandoned traditional landline telephones, Rasmussen Reports uses an online survey tool to interview randomly selected participants from a demographically diverse panel. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Platinum Members.

Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large (see methodology). Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. While partisan affiliation is generally quite stable over time, there are a fair number of people who waver between allegiance to a particular party or independent status. Our baseline targets are established based upon separate survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews) and targets are updated monthly. Currently, the baseline targets for the adult population are 34.9% Democrats, 34.3% Republicans, and 30.3% unaffiliated. Likely voter samples typically show a slightly larger advantage for the Republicans.

A review of last week’s key polls is posted each Saturday morning.

We also invite you to review other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls. To get a sense of longer-term trends, check out our month-by-month review of the president’s numbers

Some cool book reviews for young adults images:

YA Lesbo Books


Image by Earthworm
There weren’t any gay themed young adult books in my day. It might have helped—a lot. A blogger I follow, for girl-on-girl action in media, reviewed these. So I picked them up at the library and read them back to back. It was like being at the film festival.

The best and most typical one is called Keeping You A Secret. Here the story is laid out from the day they meet, follows step by step realization of a crush at hand, the inevitable questioning and realization and the obligatory abuse from society as the relationship meets the road, a bit overplayed here, but made up for by a near perfect kiss scene and resolution. I would put it right up there with Annie On My Mind, the only YA book I had read before on the subject.

Empress of The World follows a group of teens at a camp for smart kids. They come with an assortment of issues though none are too unusual. We have little idea what goes on in the head of the object of the crush so seems thin, but nicely done as an ensemble piece.

Pages For You does not really qualify as young adult fiction and is shelved in the adult section at the library. It features a 17 year old girl in her first year of college and her involvement with a TA, an older woman. Written in that literary way that annoys me so much for its attention to pretty description, but complete lack of ordinary detail as if trying to transcend time and place. Reminds me of Patricia Highsmith and those pulp novels of the 50s with the lurid lesbo covers, but not enough description of the sex. Good writing makes it easy to read though and probably makes a young reader feel very adult as I did when I read Mary Renault’s non-historical novels about women.

Stir Fry is by an Irish writer which automatically reminds me of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, (famous coming of age lesbian story set in Yorkshire). Doesn’t qualify as a YA book either. It follows another 17 year old going to college. This one answers an ad for a room in a two bedroom apartment with a lesbian couple only she doesn’t pick-up on that until later. This scenario was unpredictable so filled me with suspense. I liked it the best even though there is not quite a real kiss scene. I thought it had a very believable emotional development of the protagonist and realistic portrayal of the couple.

The larger theme of these LGBT stories, I realized, is the discovery of an unexpected destiny. One that will change the social status of the protagonist, but allow them unrecognized powers. That last part is not usually included in these stories (unless you count all the artistic talent), but I’m throwing it in anyway. Add to that the usual journey in search of identity and questions about what kind of life am I going to live and what am I going to be and it just about fills the mood I’ve been in lately since turning 51. I am trolling for a new destiny having fulfilled a huge one with the publication of my book last year. Also wondering what kind of book I would write if I were to tell a similar story. I have largely avoided writing about that past. Been done too much already since queers often come with literary gene. Do we need any more such books?

Summer reading program for kids and teens goes green


Image by Newton Free Library
Welcome to the Young Adult (YA) Summer Reading Program, Think Green @ the Newton Free Library. Sign up online by clicking on the Teen SRP 2010 tab on the Summer Reading page. The program runs from June 24th to Sept. 6th. Teens (entering 6th grade through 12th grade) must read, log, and include a short review of 3 books in order to be eligible for a gift certificate prize at the end of the summer.

Old Cover for The Moon Coin / A Moon Realm Novel


Image by Nine is the Magic Number
Six Chapter Preview: THE MOON COIN / A Moon Realm Novel. PDF, Mobi, or ePub. wp.me/p1BEjH-kc

"Tales, unlike stories, never lie. You see, a tale is an account of things in their due order, often divulged secretly, or as gossip. Would you like to hear one? "—Lord Autumn

Uncle Ebb was so good at telling his tales of the Moon Realm that sometimes it sounded like he’d been there himself.

As children, Lily and Jasper listened raptly to his bedtime tales of a place where nine moons swirled around one another, each inhabited by strange and wondrous beings: magical lunamancers; undersea merfolk; wise birds; winged dragons; and Lily’s favorite, the heroic, leonine Rinn.

There was only one rule: don’t tell a soul.

But now, years later, Uncle Ebb is missing. Lily has learned the secret behind the tales, and soon Jasper will too. But there’s one big problem. You see, something terrible has happened in the Moon Realm. . . .

Featuring twenty-two stunning full-color illustrations by Carolyn Arcabascio. Volume One of the fantasy adventure series The Moon Realm.

.99 at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and the iTunes iBookstore.

Free Sneak Preview of The Moon Coin! Formatted for ePub, Mobi, or PDF. Please share. Enjoy. wp.me/p1BEjH-2U

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Praise for The Moon Coin

“If I had to compare The Moon Coin to any other work, I’d say it is a cross between Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. It reads very well for middle grade and younger YA, like Narnia, with the immense fantasy of LOTR. The imagery is so captivating, Lily is so mature, and the reader is swept along [on] her adventure as if we are riding the Rinn or facing the dragon ourselves. It is everything you want a great fantasy to be and then some.” —Gathering Leaves Reviews (5 Stars)

“The Moon Coin was Middle-Grade Fantasy at its best! The world Richard Due created was lush and overflowing with imagination and wonder. This story puts you in a fantasy overload, full of creatures and places you only dream about existing. When I was a kid I would have annihilated this book, slept with it under my pillow, and carried it with me at school.” —Sizzling Reads (5 Flames)

“The Moon Coin, fast, furious and immensely enjoyable, reminded me of what I love about fiction. . . . The way Mr. Due has crafted his tale is wickedly enthralling, with a touch of what we know added into the larger mix of what we don’t, we get to discover everything right along with Lily (and eventually Jasper). There are surprises around every corner and by taking the more difficult theme of division, forcible annexation and the underlying currents of coloring up the truth, Mr. Due has made The Moon Coin into a story that is deeply layered and developed as much as it is entertaining and delightful.” —In the Closet with a Bibliophile (5 Stars)

“. . . I fell in love with the hand drawn illustrations. Call me old fashioned, but I really miss the days when all illustrations looked like these. Computers are a fantastic invention (without them this ebook wouldn’t exist) but I sure do miss the gorgeous fruits of someone talented’s labor. Carolyn Arcabascio’s illustrations really bring the story to life. They are that little link that makes all the difference in becoming immersed in the story.” —Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile (5 Stars)

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Copyright © 2011 by Richard Due. All rights reserved.

Gibbering Gnome Press, A Division of Ingenious Inventions Run Amok, Ink™

The Moon Realm™