Mormon Life - Books tag

Mormonism 101? Hatch plans book to explain his LDS religion

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:41:00 -0600

source: sltrib.com

Mormon Life says: Could be great publicity for the Church to have a veteran politician write such a book. Orrin Hatch apparently is poised to pen a “tell-all” book — all, that is, about the Mormonism he knows and loves.

Hatch — Utah's senior U.S. senator who faces a Republican primary rival next month and, if he prevails then, a Democratic foe in the fall in his bid for a seventh term — plans to take up the challenge of explaining his faith to outsiders in the new volume, An Insider's Guide to Mormon Beliefs.

Most popular teen book characters use most profanity, BYU study says

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:39:00 -0600

source: sltrib.com

Mormon Life says: Too bad. "Fair is foul and foul is fair" takes on a new meaning in books written for adolescents as the fairest characters take on the foulest language, according to a new study.

The study published in the May 18 edition of Mass Communication and Society revealed that most of the profanity in adolescent novels comes from the most-popular, wealthy and attractive characters.

Brigham Young University professor Sarah Coyne analyzed the top 40 novels on The New York Times best-seller list for teenagers from 2008.

Top LDS writers honored at 5th annual Whitney Awards

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:07:00 -0600

by Brooke Ward - LDS Living
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Last weekend, the Whitney Awards honored the top authors in LDS fiction. Take a look to see who won (and find out what books to add to your reading list).

Veterans and rookies of the world of LDS fiction gathered together in Provo, Utah, on May 5, as the best works of 2011 were honored at the 5th Annual Whitney Awards. The awards—named for writer, poet and apostle Orson F. Whitney—recognized novels in seven categories, as well as the lifetime achievements of genre pioneers Jack Weyland and Douglas Thayer.

Deseret Book’s Rachel Ann Nunes was presented the first award of the evening in the category of General Fiction for her tender novel Before I Say Goodbye. A seasoned author with more than 30 books to her credit, Nunes has had her work recognized in others spheres, but said the Whitneys have a special significance, because it is a brainchild of LDStorymakers, the nonprofit writers guild she founded in 2002.

“This is great . . . I’m stunned,” Nunes said after making the trip to the podium to collect her first Whitney. “I’ve been writing for a very long time, and this is my fourth time being a finalist so I’ve come to expect to go home empty-handed.”

Fellow Deseret Book author Gale Sears also left with more than she came with, picking up the Whitney for Historical Fiction for her novel Letters in the Jade Dragon Box.

“I love what I do,” Sears told the audience, offering a heartfelt “well done” to the other winners, nominees, and all others who write in any form. “It’s truly a blessing to be able to do what we do as authors. I love to be able to do research, and I know that sounds kind of dorky, but it is so rewarding to dig into the past and unearth those gems.”

Newcomer Tess Hilmo uncovered treasures of her own with her first published novel, With a Name Like Love: a pair of Whitneys for General Youth Fiction and Best Novel by a New Author.

“This is such a blessing, shock and joy,” Hilmo said, adding that her nine-year journey to publication sometimes left her wondering if the ball would ever really start rolling for her.

“Sometimes when I write, I think about E.B. White and how he said writing is an act of faith,” Hilmo said. “We write initially with the hope that we’ll finish, then we need to have faith that the words on the page will reflect the story in our hearts; and finally that someone somewhere will connect with it somehow.”

Veteran author Stephanie Black, who won her fourth consecutive Mystery/Suspense Whitney for Rearview Mirror, has been blessed to have readers connect with her writing over and over again.

“I was really not expecting this,” Black said, after having predicted an end to her winning streak over dinner. “The competition was incredibly fierce this year, and it’s humbling to be numbered among them.”

Like Black, other familiar names accounted for the balance of the winners: Carla Kelly, taking the Romance category with Borrowed Light; Brandon Sanderson, coming out on top in Speculative Fiction with his latest Mistborn novel, The Alloy of Law; and Whitney Awards creator Robison Wells, who edged out the other nominees in the highly competitive Speculative Youth Fiction category with Variant. His brother Dan Wells also had reason to celebrate, picking up his third Whitney for Novel of the Year for his book I Don’t Want to Kill You.

Jack Weyland, despite his own successes, including Charly and 24 other best-selling books, said he was humbled to be among the evening’s honorees. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in the company of so many talented, wonderful people,” he said, adding that he felt particularly moved by the sense of joint effort and the potential that writers with faith in Jesus Christ have to affect change.

Weyland and Douglas Thayer, both greeted with a standing ovation, were awarded the Outstanding Achievement and Lifetime Achievement Awards, respectively.

“These men are not just pioneers, but also visionaries who have made a lifetime commitment to literature,” said Whitney Awards committee president Josi Kilpack, who later added that it was the first time that all award recipients were in attendance at the ceremony.

“This is the pinnacle of our year, and we are blessed to be able to honor the time and dedication that has gone into the creations of these authors,” Kilpack said.

To learn more about the Whitney Awards, visit whitneyawards.com.

Ideas for a Fun and Christ-centered Easter

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:10:00 -0600

by LDS Living Staff
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Here are a few ideas for a more Christ-centered Easter, along with a few of our staff's family traditions.

Easter is a fun holiday, filled with celebration of spring renewal, color, and sweet things. But, more importantly, it is a celebration of the resurrection of the Savior.

We talk a lot about Christmas and traditions, but what about Easter? President Gordon B. Hinckley says, "There would be no Christmas if there had not been Easter. The babe Jesus of Bethlehem would be but another baby without the redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary, and the triumphant fact of the Resurrection."

After discussing it on our Facebook page and hearing some of your ideas (join us on Facebook), we decided to put together a list. Here are a few ideas for incorporating more of a celebration of Christ in your Easter this year:

Read the First Presidency Easter Message with your family or close friends. Click here to get it.

Watch some of the Church's new Bible videos. The Church has produced some beautiful new videos depicting events of the Bible. Watching the resurrection video, in particular, would be perfect for an Easter activity. Click here to see it.

Read through some of the resources in our article "Preparing for Easter: Ideas for Celebrating." The article contains an advent calendar for the weeks leading up to Easter; while it's too late to use it exactly as outlined, it has a great outline for a discussion of the final days of the Savior's life. To find out more about Eric Huntsman's book God So Loved the World: The Final Days of the Savior's Life, click here.

In addition, here are some of our own staff traditions – both fun and Christ-centered:

Alexa Justesen, Intern

In my family we did the standard Easter egg hunt, but my mom would do neat spiritual things with them. Most of the plastic eggs held candy or coins, but some would hold symbolic items such as thorns to represent the crown of thorns the Savior wore or nails to represent him being nailed to the cross, or white cloth to represent his resurrection. After we found all of the eggs we’d get together and talk about each of the symbols. I remember it being really neat.

Mandy Slack, Intern

When I was a kid, my parents hid the Easter baskets. I remember my dad used to make the baskets out of our plastic cereal bowls, which could seem pathetic but is actually a fun memory for me. I remember finding the bowls of candy in the microwave or weird places like that. Also, my grandparents hid little chocolate eggs in their yard and we would go look for as many as we could.

Kate Ensign-Lewis, Online Editor
My favorite thing growing up was the huge Easter egg hunt my grandma would have. Each of us had a big See's chocolate egg deviously hidden somewhere, like inside the peanut butter jar or the air conditioning vent. But since starting my own family, one of my favorite things is reading through the story of the resurrection with my husband. It's a small thing, but I think it's a perfect companion tradition to re-enacting the nativity, which we always do at Christmas.

Brad Hayes, Designer

One of our traditions takes place when we all dye Easter eggs. There is always a contest for the ugliest egg. We do this because in order to create beautiful eggs you need to not be afraid to mess one up.

Ruthann Cunningham, Circulation Director

When I was growing up, we always got church CDs and Mormon Ad posters in our Easter baskets instead of candy.

Kaela Worthen, Associate Editor

My family always does an Easter egg hunt in the morning with all the fun candies and goodies and such, but in the evening, we have a special Easter basket filled with numbered plastic eggs. Each one has a scripture and a small item that represents a part of the Easter story. The last egg is empty, with only the scripture “He is not here: for he is risen” (Matthew 28:6). It’s a great way to connect all the fun of the morning and the secular Easter traditions to the true meaning of what we’re celebrating—Christ’s Atonement for all of us.

Ashley Evanson, Online Editor

Growing up we didn't have many spiritual Easter traditions, but now that I'm grown, I've thought of a few I'd like to incorporate into my own family. One is baking Resurrection Rolls - an idea I got from a cousin. Here's how it works:

Resurrection Rolls

Ingredients

can crescent roll dough

8 large marshmallows

melted butter

cinnamon sugar

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 and read John 19 while it's heating.

2. Roll out the dough and explain how it is like the cloth they wrapped Jesus' body in.

3. Explain how a marshmallow is like Jesus, pure and white without sin, and it represents his body.

4. Roll the marshmallow in the melted butter and then cinnamon sugar, representing the oils and spices they placed on Jesus' body before burying him.

5. Roll the marshmallow in the dough, pinching the edges shut. Explain how this is like wrapping Jesus' body in the cloth.

6. Put the rolls in the oven, or the tomb, for 12 min.

7. While they bake, read John 20:1-18.

8. When baked, open up the rolls to discover the marshmallow is gone, just like Jesus' body was gone from the tomb because he was resurrected.

Your turn: What are some of your favorite Easter traditions? Let us know in the comments below.

{Lifestyle} Roundup: Forget Me Not

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:22:00 -0600

by Ashley Evanson
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: President Uchtdorf's talk "Forget Me Not" was an instant classic, resulting in "reminders" of all sorts - from statuettes to pretty rings, and even a book. We've found the very best the Mormon marketplace has to offer.

Photo from Deseret Book

We love President Uchtdor's newest book Forget Me Not. This would make the perfect Mother's Day gift (hint, hint, husbands!).

Photo from WillowTree

A lovely forget me not figurine

Photo from It Works for Bobbi

FREE 5x7 printable quote

Photo from TaylorsEclectic Esty shop

Never forget to be happy with this forget me not ring.

Photo from PrintasticDesign Etsy shop

Subway art bookmarks

Photo from Caty99 Esty shop

Digital print of President Uchtorf's "Forget Me Not" talk

Photo from Ringmasters

Forget me not necklace

LDS author nominated for prestigious science fiction award

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 02:48:00 -0600

by Alexa Justesen - LDS Living
source: ldsliving.com

Mormon Life says: Nancy Fulda has been nominated for a Nebula Award for her story about one autistic girl's experiences in the future. Inspired by her own autistic son's point of view, Fulda crafted a unique perspective on time in "Movement: A Short Story about Autism in the Future."

You may not have ever heard of the Nebula Awards, but you probably have heard of the Oscars.

The Nebula Awards are pretty much the same thing, but for science fiction writers instead of movie stars. And BYU alumna Nancy Fulda has been nominated for one. Her piece, “Movement: A Short Story about Autism in the Future,” tells the story of Hannah, a highly gifted teenager who is unable to communicate verbally. When her parents look in to a life-changing treatment, Hannah’s life is turned upside down.

Fulda, whose son is autistic, says that “Movement” was inspired by working with his unique abilities.

"‘Movement’ grew out of my efforts to comprehend a mental architecture that was utterly foreign to me, and from my son’s tender and diligent attempts to do the same,” she says. “The experience of trying to think differently, and of learning to respect my son's interpretation of the world as valid, enabled me to find a literary voice for Hannah and for her unique perception of time.”

However, using autism as a character trait wasn’t a conscious decision, it was just something she can relate to. “I was playing around with ideas about time and needed a focal point. Somewhere during the third or fourth revision, I realized that I needed a very unusual protagonist to discuss these ideas. I needed someone who doesn't see the world the same way most people do. Autism was on my mind at the time, so it was perhaps inevitable that the fictional condition I created for Hannah looks and feels very much like autism.”

As a member of the Church, Fulda says it’s easy for her faith to reflect in her writing. “It's my personal belief that authors can't help injecting their world view into their work," she said. "It's a subconscious process. We write what we see, we write what we experience; how can we not also write what we believe?”

She even includes gospel themes such as agency and eternal progression in her story, although the reader will have to pay attention. “More than anything else, Hannah desires to fill the measure of her potential, and find joy.”

Because being nominated for a Nebula Award is such an honor, Fulda was thrilled when she found out. It was totally unexpected, though, since the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America traditionally notifies Nebula finalists personally, and though the announcement of this year's nominees was approaching, she hadn't received a phone call.

“Imagine my joy when I got home from my son's karate class and found an answering machine message from my dear friend, telling me that ‘Movement’ had been nominated for the category of Best Short Story," she said. "I tend to bounce through the house, quite literally, whenever something good happens with my writing. In this case, I believe I bounced for a solid hour!”

Fulda has won various science fiction awards in the past, including the Phobos Award, the Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award and the Jim Baen Memorial Award. However, she isn’t stopping there. “Well, a Hugo nomination would be a nice addition to the collection. The Nebula and Hugo Awards are the two major milestones for science fiction and fantasy, roughly equivalent to the Oscars for film. Someday I'd also love to be nominated for a Whitney Award, but since they don't have a short fiction category, I guess I'll have to write a few novels first!”

The 47th Annual Nebula Awards will take place in Arlington, VA, May 17-20, and is put on by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. To read “Movement,” check out nancyfulda.com.

{A&E} Romance Novels: Another Form of Porn?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 01:06:00 -0600

by Ashley Bardsley
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: As a librarian, I have the unique opportunity to help people find books to entertain and inspire. But one too many times I have seen women get caught up in the world of romance novels and lose sight of what is virtuous and lovely.

“…If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy we seek after these things.”

The whole 13th Article of Faith is, in my opinion, a great motto for how to live a happy life. I am a librarian. I have the unique opportunity to help people find books that in some way entertain and inspire. I hear a lot of feedback about authors, writing styles, story plots, and characters. I also see a lot of trends in the world of reading. It is regarding one of these trends that I would like to focus today’s post.

Romance novels.

Not Jane Austen romance novels; they're just fine. We're talking the mass-market produced novels with someone who looks like Fabio on the cover and explicit sex scenes as the primary content. Those ones.

Yes, we are going there.

I see women check out romance novel after romance novel like there is no tomorrow. I believe these books are a much more serious form of pornography than people realize.

Before you think, “Who is this blogger, and who gave her the right to say something so presumptuous?” Hear me out. I have heard women talk about these novels as their escape. That they love reading about the characters and questionable sections of the novels because it is so far from the life they themselves live. It is their guilty pleasure. I have seen these fictional fantasies take over existing relationships. Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, friends, grandmothers, you name it, individuals who are wasting time in a trashy nowhere land rather than living their own lives. This librarian has seen it all.

Now, all reading is escapism to some extent, and I am in no way advocating against reading. However, a book that creates a world or relationships that make you want to escape so strongly that your current world and relationships are no longer satisfactory is not safe, and the feelings of lust that are produced by such material are not safe either.

Just today, a 17-year-old girl told me about the romance novel she was currently reading. She was genuinely surprised at how racy the book was. If a teenage, nonmember girl can see where to draw the line with these books, I think we can too.

I know that romance novels are not the only form of entertainment that is questionable; however, I think it is important to always ask ourselves, “Is this ‘virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy’?” Then to seek after those things.

Your turn: How do you decide what is and isn’t appropriate to read? Where is the line between an enjoyable story (or movie) that has romance in it and one that is pornographic?

Side note: Deseret Book just released a new brand of book called “A Proper Romance.” This brand new genre promises romance “at its very best—and at its cleanest” that still provides all the feel-good thrills and butterflies of your favorite chick flicks. The first book, Edenbrooke, is a Heyeresque Regency that should please all Jane Austen fans, comes out this Tuesday.

For more information about Edenbrooke and to watch the book trailer, click here.

Lemon Tart: Chapters 10-12

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:04:00 -0600

by Josi Kilpack
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Enjoy the fourth installment of Lemon Tart, a culinary mystery by Josi Kilpack. Stay tuned for next week's installment, chapters 13-15. To read a previous installment, click here.

Chapter 10

Sadie straightened and clenched her jaw. “You followed me?”

“And for good reason,” he said. “Now give me the papers.”

Sadie hesitated a moment and then held the items in question even closer. “I don’t think so,” she said, lifting her chin. “They were given to me to put with her other things.”

“Her other things are all part of a crime scene—those papers are hereby part of the investigation too.”

Sadie pursed her lips and said nothing as she tried to figure a way out of this.

“You don’t want to push me,” Madsen said, leaning so close to her that she could smell the coffee on his breath. Library patrons continued to walk in and out of the building, looking at them. “I’ve taken as much interference from you as I’m going to.”

“And I’ve helped you out a great deal as well,” Sadie fired back—not bothering to whisper at all. An older woman stopped to stare at them openly. Sadie couldn’t tell if she was simply watching for entertainment or truly concerned for Sadie’s safety. “Yet you continue to suspect me, and now you’re even following me after Detective Cunningham told me I could return Anne’s books.”

“Detective Cunningham?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, a look of amused arrogance on his face.

Sadie reviewed what Officer Malloy had said when he handed over the books. He’d simply said the detective asked him to bring them over. She’d assumed it had been Cunningham. Apparently she’d assumed wrong. “Why go through all the trouble of having me do this?”

“Because I wanted proof that you’re a troublemaker, that’s why. I’m on my way to a hearing and thought I’d give it a shot. And sure enough, you found something and you want it for yourself.”

Sadie rolled her eyes. “You have all the logic of a fourteen-year-old,” she said. “I haven’t even left the library—I didn’t have time to call you.”

The old woman was still standing there, glancing between Sadie and the check-out counter as if trying to decide whether or not to call for help. Sadie looked at her imploringly, until another woman several feet ahead of her turned and said, “Julia, are you coming?” The old woman gave Sadie a shrug, as if to say she’d help her if she didn’t need to get inside. Sadie was not impressed. Was there no such thing as a good citizen anymore?

“Come with me,” Detective Madsen said through clenched teeth. He took her arm, none too gently, and led her out of the building. Sadie tried not to show her own panic, though she realized what she ought to do was scream for help. She stumbled to keep up with him until they reached the same blue sedan she’d seen in front of Anne’s house earlier. He opened the back door.

“I’m not getting into that car with—” The next thing she knew she felt his hand on the top of her head and within mere moments she was in the car. How’d he do that? The next second he was in the car too, right beside to her.

“Look,” he said in a voice thick with frustration as he slammed the door shut. “I’m trying to solve a murder here.”

“That you think I committed.”

“You are not helping yourself by being so difficult.”

She scooted as far away from him as possible—it wasn’t decent to be squished up against him in a parked car, even if she was a decade or two older than he was. What if someone saw them? She tried to open the door to get out, but it was locked.

“I’m not being difficult,” she said. “I’m only trying to help. I don’t believe it is within your authority to detain me against my will.”

“I think you happen to know an awful lot about things you shouldn’t know and it’s most certainly within my authority to investigate that.”

Sadie furrowed her eyebrows. “What do I know that I shouldn’t know?”

“Where she was killed. Where all her important papers were kept—”

“You people asked me those things!” she yelled.

“And you knew the answers!” he yelled back.

“I’m trying to be helpful!”

“You’re making a mess of it. This is real life, lady, not some game. You’re not going to beat us to the punch and solve the crime, so if that’s what you’re trying to do, it’s time to give it up.”

“I’m only trying to help,” Sadie said again and folded her arms over her chest.

“If you wanted to help, you’d keep your nose out of things.”

Sadie pursed her lips to keep from saying that she had no choice but to put her nose into things. This wasn’t just about Anne. Ron was involved, and Trevor was still gone. She considered the enormity of the answers she still needed to find, and felt tears rise up; she quickly blinked them away. “Fine,” she said, handing over the papers. “But I want it on the record that I think you are treating me very unfairly and that I have cooperated at every turn. Whatever issues you have with Detective Cunningham are your problem. Trying to one-up him by badgering me is a pretty lousy substitution for whatever you’re trying to get.”

Madsen’s neck turned a dark pink and his jaw flexed. She’d hit a nerve. He let out a grunt and shook his head. “Just back off and let the professionals do their job,” he said as he took the papers from her.

She bit back the sarcastic comment on the tip of her tongue about just how professional he was being. He looked through the papers and lifted his eyes to meet hers. “I need the other one too,” he said with exasperation.

“Look, I gave you what I was given, if—”

“The business card,” Madsen said in sharp tones. “Give it to me or I’ll arrest you for interfering with a police investigation. I’m already late for the hearing so just give me the card and let me do my job.”

Sadie let out a sigh and pulled the card from the sleeve of her hoodie where she’d managed to hide it. She told herself she would have given it to him later, but he brought out the worst in her and made her act like the Sadie who once hid her dad’s golf clubs because he wouldn’t let her go to a party after a high school football game. He never did find out she was the one who put them behind the water heater and made him miss his tee time. Passive-aggressive was likely the technical term, but Sadie thought of it as quiet justice. Madsen took the card and then held her eyes. She didn’t flinch.

“Can I expect you to stay out of this now?” he asked in what she supposed was a professional tone but was actually a ten on the offensive scale.

“Does Detective Cunningham know you’re here, pulling me into an unmarked car and threatening me?”

The pink on Madsen’s neck inched its way up. He said nothing.

Sadie nodded sharply. “That’s what I thought. Will you please let me out, or should I start screaming for help?”

He let out a long breath and finally opened his door. He slid out and she stepped out a moment later, not looking at him or allowing him any parting comments. Her car was only a few spaces away, and once inside, she waited until Madsen had pulled out of the parking lot. Then she reached under her seat to retrieve her local phone book. She always kept last year’s edition in her car for reference while running errands.

It took less than a minute to find Attorney Gimes’s address. She smiled to herself and shifted into drive.

Chapter 11

Sadie pushed through the glass doors and approached the reception desk. She cleared her throat. “Hi,” she said to the twenty-something blonde behind the desk. The desk groaned under the weight of papers and files piled everywhere and the receptionist was sufficiently frazzled. “I wondered if I could speak with Susan Gimes,” Sadie asked.

“Do you have an appointment?” the young woman asked without looking up from the files in her hands.

Sadie shook her head. “No.”

The receptionist looked at her for the first time. “Are you a client?” she asked and Sadie could have wrung the condescension from her voice like water from a dishrag.

“No, but a friend of mine was.”

The woman’s face hardened even more—apparently being the friend of a client and having no appointment didn’t count for much. “I just wanted to talk with Susan Gimes for a minute. I guess I should have called first.”

“A call would have been nice,” the receptionist said almost too quiet to hear. Louder, but with no more enthusiasm, she added, “Have a seat. I’ll see if she has a minute.”

“Thank you,” Sadie said. She backed up and sat in one of the red upholstered chairs in the waiting area. She’d no sooner sat down when her cell phone rang, causing her to jump.

Is it Ron? she wondered, her insides knotting up. She wasn’t ready to talk to him, but a look at the caller ID showed a number she didn’t recognize. Deciding not to take the chance, she hit the end button and waited until she heard the chime indicating a voice message had been left. After dialing her mailbox, she listened to the message.

“Mrs. Hoffmiller? This is Jean from the library. After you left I remembered something else Anne Lemmon left at the library at story time on Friday. She’d been on the computer and had printed some pages. But her son started throwing a tantrum and she left without paying for her copies. We put them aside for her to pick up next time. If you wanted to put them with her other things, you’re welcome to pick them up—but you’ll need to pay the fees for them. It’s fifteen cents a page. I’m so sorry for your loss—let us know if there’s anything we can do. Thanks.”

Sadie saved the message before closing her voice mail. She remembered that day because Anne had asked Sadie to watch Trevor while she went to her job interview that afternoon. Anne had still been frustrated about Trevor’s tantrum when she dropped him off but Sadie told her she’d done the right thing, taking him home and putting him immediately in time-out.

Sadie wondered what Anne had printed and was eager to get back to the library. But first things first. She looked around the office, feeling antsy. It wasn’t large or fancy, but it was very cozy and Sadie made a note to compliment Ms. Gimes on that if she had the chance.

Sadie had never been very good at waiting. When she went to the doctor’s office she always took a book. But she’d not anticipated waiting in the office of an attorney she’d never heard of and the minutes felt like hours. She tapped her fingers on her purse and tried not to watch the second hand of the large clock hanging above the reception area, but it was hard not to. After four minutes she considered making an appointment and coming back, but that was silly. She was a grown woman, surely she could wait a few more minutes.

She scanned the waiting room again and saw copies of Time and Working Woman on an end table. Neither one held any interest for her. She did have the library book in her purse, but there was no way she was going to read that in public. It had been a lot of years since she’d read a romance novel and she wasn’t sure she was prepared for other people to see her with it. Then she remembered the book list the library had printed for her. That was something she was planning to go over anyway. With anxious relief to have found something to do, she reached into her purse and dug out the list.

After scanning half the list, one title stood out to her: My Father’s Eyes. Sadie fumbled in her purse for a pen and underlined it, even though she was unsure why it had caught her attention. She read through the rest of the tape and found at the bottom, where fines or unreturned items were listed, that My Father’s Eyes had never been returned—Anne had paid for it before it was even overdue. Sadie stared at the title again. There was something familiar about it but she couldn’t think what it was. Had Sadie read the book? Not likely.

After reading through the list again and determining there was nothing else that stood out, she folded the list and returned it to her purse, ignoring the hidden romance novel for a second time. However, her nerves tightened with every second, and she finally gave in. The waiting area was empty anyway. She unzipped her purse and opened the book hiding inside, careful to keep the cover in her purse. She had barely gotten through the flowery description of the buxom main character, when the receptionist interrupted her, bringing her back to the present.

“Mrs. Gimes will see you now,” the receptionist said in a tone of forced politeness as Sadie quickly zipped her purse back up.

Susan Gimes was on her feet when Sadie entered the office. She was very tall, at least six feet, Sadie guessed, with black hair cut short and trendy, and large brown eyes. Her very presence was quite imposing, something Sadie felt sure was an asset in her line of work. The two women met halfway across the room and Sadie shook the proffered hand before taking the seat offered to her.

“My apologies for my receptionist—we’re in the middle of updating our files and computer system and we ended up shorthanded today. Because of that I’m afraid I only have a couple minutes to meet with you,” Susan Gimes said with a very professional smile as she sat behind the large mahogany desk.

“That’s okay,” Sadie said with a nod. “I’m sorry to have interrupted you, Ms. Gimes, but—”

“Call me Susan.”

“Okay, thank you. My name is Sadie Hoffmiller—you can call me Sadie.” She cleared her throat and opened her mouth to continue.

“You headed up the Youth in Action program a few years ago, right?”

Sadie blinked and allowed her thoughts to shift. “I did,” Sadie said with a smile. “Did we meet then?” It would be nice if they had, though Sadie would be embarrassed not to remember.

Susan shook her head. “No, we didn’t. But you worked with my daughter, Laura Johanson—I remarried after her father and I split up and I took my new husband’s name.” She gave Sadie a soft smile. “She was really struggling. In fact she was arrested for shoplifting and the judge offered her the option of working with Youth in Action instead of putting it on her record. She had a wonderful experience working with you, Mrs. Hoffmiller.” She looked down, seemingly embarrassed. “I always meant to send you a thank you card, and I didn’t get around to it.”

“Oh, it was my pleasure,” Sadie said, invigorated by something positive, by the reminder that she had done good things in the lives of other people. “Laura was a sweet girl. Did she ever make those cinnamon-ginger cookies I taught her to make?”

Susan nodded. “She did and they were wonderful. She makes them every Christmas now. I have to admit I was surprised she took to cooking so well. I grew up watching my mother slave away in the kitchen and swore I’d never do it. I’ve been good to my word, so it’s been surprising to me to see how much Laura enjoys it.”

“Well, Laura was a good girl and a quick study in the kitchen. It was my philosophy, especially with those young girls, that directing them back to the basics of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of themselves allowed them to build self-confidence from the inside out instead of basing so much of their self-image on social labels. If they know what they are capable of at home, then they can enter the world with that same confidence and help themselves and the people they love.” She suddenly realized she might be offending this woman who had just told her she personally hated kitchen work; she felt her cheeks heat up. “Um, I mean, it works for some girls, and then others are, uh, directed elsewhere for those same—”

Susan’s smile got even bigger as Sadie attempted to save herself and she finally laughed out loud, cutting Sadie off. “Laura’s in culinary school in New York right now. You were a wonderful influence for her at a difficult time in her life and set her on a good path—I’m not the least bit ungrateful for that. In fact she taught me how to make a few things and cooking’s not as bad as I thought.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” Sadie said. “Tell her hi from me; I’m excited for her success.”

They both smiled at one another, but the silence became awkward.

“I’m sorry,” Susan finally said. “I got off the subject. What can I do for you today?”

A pall fell over the room. “Well, I’m here because . . .” She paused, not sure where to start. “My friend, Anne Lemmon, passed away this morning—actually, she was murdered.”

Susan Gimes’ eyes went wide and her back straightened. “I found your card in her papers and I’m trying to . . .” She paused. What was she trying to do? Detective Madsen thought she was trying to solve the case. But she wasn’t. Was she? Sadie felt her shoulders slump. “Well, I guess I don’t know what I’m trying to do. I just . . . well, I never asked much about Anne’s past—she was trying to make a fresh start. And now that all this has happened, I’m hoping to find something that will help me find her son and I—”

“Her son?” Susan leaned forward slightly. “What happened to her son?”

“He’s gone,” Sadie said. “Sometime this morning or last night Anne was killed, and we haven’t found her son.”

Susan leaned back, her fingertips together. “And so you came to me to try to find out more about her?”

“She kept all her papers and things in a filing cabinet and it was stolen. Both the police and myself know very little of where to start.”

“Do the police know about me?”

Sadie nodded, trying to keep the sour expression off her face as she thought about Madsen taking the card. “Yes, I’m sure they will be contacting you.”

Susan fixed her with a pointed look. “Do they know you’re here?”

Sadie squirmed. “Uh, not really.” Though she wouldn’t be surprised if Madsen showed up as soon as his hearing was over. “Anne was a good friend of mine, and I helped her with her son. I can’t do nothing. I’m hoping to get some answers—something to help things move forward. I know she was from Boston, but I don’t know who her parents are, and with the filing cabinet gone, I have nowhere to start.”

The room was silent for several seconds. “I’m afraid I can’t give out any information about Anne. It’s protected by client privilege.”

“Oh,” Sadie said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She looked at her hands and let out a breath. She looked up and smiled apologetically. “I’m very sorry to have taken your time today—though it was wonderful to hear how Laura’s doing. I should have thought things through better before I came.” She stood up, embarrassed to have wasted the time of this woman, but grateful that Susan was as kind as she’d been.

“Why don’t you give me your name and number,” Susan suggested. “There might be something I can give you, but I’ll need to review the file first.”

“That would be wonderful,” Sadie said. She started fumbling in her purse, looking for a pen. Susan handed her one along with a pad of paper. Sadie thanked her and began scribbling down her information.

A buzzer from the desk startled her and she jumped slightly as the receptionist’s voice came over the intercom. “Susan, Garrison PD is here. They need to speak with you.”

Sadie felt her face fall and her hand freeze, but she tried to contain her panic and finish writing her phone number. Her mouth was suddenly dry as she anticipated how she would explain her being here. Would they believe it was just a coin-cidence?

“You don’t want them to know you were here?” Susan asked, correctly reading the look on Sadie’s face.

“I wouldn’t ask you to lie about it,” Sadie replied, forcing a smile. She handed the pad of paper to Susan and was relieved when the other woman quickly put it in her desk. “But, well, no, I’d rather they didn’t know.”

“Why don’t you wait here,” Susan said as she stood. “I can talk with them in the waiting area and then show you out when I’m finished.” She was dressed in heeled boots and a long skirt that she smoothed in anticipation of leaving the room.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Sadie said.

“Not at all,” Susan said with a smile. “Just sit tight, this will only take a few minutes. You might want to sit over there.” Susan indicated a chair next to the door that was out of view from anyone looking in from the waiting area.

Sadie nodded and sat in the chair, taking a deep breath while Susan took long strides to the door. When the door opened and she heard Madsen’s voice, she felt her stomach tighten and she pressed herself against the back of the chair. Hadn’t he said he had a hearing to go to? She’d expected that to buy her some time. Susan closed the door and the voices became muted. Sadie was forced to wait again. Even with the adrenaline rush of knowing Madsen was out there, Sadie was bored and fidgety within thirty seconds.

After a full minute, she began wondering if she could shimmy down a drainpipe. The fantasy became even more tempting when the voices in the waiting area increased in both volume and speed. Sadie couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, but the overall gist of the conversation came through perfectly clear. She swallowed. If Madsen found out she was in here. . . . She shuddered at the probable scene that would follow. The door opened and she looked up. Susan’s face was tight as she headed for a bank of long filing cabinets along one wall. She didn’t acknowledge Sadie was there and left the door open.

“Of course it’s up to you,” Madsen’s voice called through the door. “But you know the drill. If I come back with a warrant, I can look through whatever I think might be helpful.”

“And make as big a mess as possible,” Susan said hotly over her shoulder.

Madsen said nothing, and Sadie remained frozen, pressed against the chair with the open door just a few feet away. Susan looked up for just a moment, shooting Sadie the quickest don’t-move look Sadie had ever seen. Sadie was quiet as a mouse and still as a statue while Susan retrieved a file and left the room, closing the door behind her again and allowing Sadie to breathe once more. She assumed Susan would be right back, but the moments stretched into minutes again. Sadie tried to resist, but kept thinking about the romance novel still in her purse. She gave up after a few more seconds and discreetly cracked it open.

Sadie was on page twelve when the door opened and then shut behind Susan Gimes. The book disappeared into her purse again and Sadie’s cheeks flushed hot. Sadie would have never guessed the captain’s quarters on a merchant ship could be so . . . exciting. She’d nearly forgotten where she was.

She looked at Susan expectantly as she zipped up her purse and held it on her lap. Susan went around her desk and sat back in her chair.

“Detective Madsen and I have a short but unsavory history,” Susan said with a tight smile. “I hate taking on other people’s problem children.” She took a deep breath.

“Problem children?” Sadie questioned.

Susan looked up with an incredulous look. “Yeah, don’t you know?”

Sadie shook her head, not having the slightest idea what Susan was referring to but wanting very much to learn. Especially if it went to further discredit Madsen.

“The name Madsen—doesn’t it ring a bell?”

Sadie thought hard. Madsen—Marlene Madsen had been a girl in Sadie’s graduating class, but Sadie didn’t think that’s what Susan meant.

“Think upper levels of the Colorado state judicial system,” Susan prodded, a half smile showing her amusement.

Sadie’s eyebrows went up. “Madsen as in Barney Madsen, attorney general of Colorado?”

“Bingo,” Susan said, leaning forward across the desk with a glint in her eye that Sadie knew too well—gossip was on its way. “Barney Madsen has one son—Sterling.” She said “Ster-ling” as if she were a serpent, elongating the S and letting the rest of the name seep out from between her teeth. “He was a second-year cop in downtown Denver, maybe you remember how our distinguished AG made a big deal about his son finding the criminals and Barney prosecuting them.”

Sadie nodded. She had a vague recollection of that very sentiment being part of Barney Madsen’s reelection campaign a couple years ago. The good ole boy who’d raised a son who would fight on the front lines of their own community.

“What you probably didn’t hear about, because it was quickly buried,” Susan continued, “was that Sterling was also part of the street racing scene, assisting in setting up races where he knew there were no officers on patrol. Any other cop would have lost his badge. But our little Sterling disappeared for a year and then shows up in Garrison about ten months ago with a stamp on his forehead and a promotion to detective.”

Sadie gasped. “That’s awful.”

“I agree. In fact it makes me, and every other professional in the justice department, a little sick to our stomachs.” She leaned back in her chair and threw her hands up. “But what do you do about it? He came with a clean record and nothing but gossip and supposition to discredit him.”

“He sure isn’t making any friends in Garrison,” Sadie said, remembering the power struggle between him and Detective Cunningham. “He’s been an absolute bear to deal with so far and I just met him this morning.”

Susan grunted and nodded. “I’ve dealt with him on two other occasions and let me tell you, he’s a piece of work; one of those men who love lording their power over everyone else.” She straightened in her chair. “But back to the topic of Anne—I’ve decided I can tell you a few things.” Sadie got the impression that Susan’s newfound cooperation was her way of rebelling against Detective Madsen. Since it meant Sadie would get answers she otherwise wouldn’t, she wasn’t about to argue. “Anne wasn’t actually my client,” she said just as Sadie’s cell phone began to ring.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sadie said, unzipping her purse and fumbling through the contents until she found her phone. She quickly hit the end button, sending the caller to her voice mail without seeing who it was. “Sorry,” she said again.

Susan smiled. “As I was saying, Anne wasn’t my client, something the detective out there made a big deal about—demanding my file since it wasn’t privileged.”

“She wasn’t your client?”

“Well, not officially,” Susan said with a nod. “Anne came in about three weeks ago for a free consultation. No money exchanged hands and she didn’t show up for her second appointment, hence I wasn’t officially retained as counsel.”

“Oh,” Sadie said dumbly. She had no idea how these things worked.

“Anyway, she came in with some questions about filing a—”

Sadie’s phone rang again. This time Sadie looked to see who it was and swallowed when she saw Ron’s cell phone number on the display. She made a split-second decision and turned the entire phone off, accidentally pushing her purse off her lap in the process. She couldn’t risk being interrupted again, and she wasn’t up to talking to Ron right now. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she shoved the phone into the pocket of her hoodie and replaced the purse on her lap. “I turned it off this time—sorry.”

Susan smiled a bit tighter than before and nodded almost imperceptibly. Sadie hoped she wasn’t regretting her decision to help.

“You were saying that Anne came to ask some questions about filing something?”

“Yes, a paternity suit against the father of her son.”

“Paternity,” Sadie repeated as everything seemed to make sense. “She needed more child support. Of course.”

“Well, actually, she was already receiving support—quite a bit. She brought in bank statements to prove that he had acknowledged his fatherhood through the financial responsibility he’d taken, but he wasn’t on the birth certificate and she wanted legal institution of the paternity.”

“She wanted her son to have a father,” Sadie summed up, her heart softening at the understanding that what Anne wanted was a good thing, the right thing. And she wanted it for Trevor.

“Right,” Susan said, her voice a bit softer as well. “We discussed her options and she was going to return and get the ball rolling as soon as she had all the documentation.”

Sadie blinked and tried to take in all the new information. Why didn’t Anne ever tell her about this? It was almost . . . offensive that Anne hadn’t confided in Sadie. But since discovering Ron’s involvement, she knew Anne and she weren’t as close as Sadie had thought they were. And yet it still hurt that Anne hadn’t trusted her.

Susan looked in the file and let out a breath. “I keep meticulous notes of every meeting and we made copies of the bank statements as well as of the child’s birth certificate she’d brought in with her, but I can’t find her file.” She looked up. “We’ve spent the last week and a half scanning all our documents into the computer so we have a copy of everything on the server. This one should have been done already, so my receptionist is looking to see if we have an electronic copy somewhere.”

As if on cue, the speakerphone on Susan’s desk came to life. “I’m sorry, Susan, it doesn’t look like that file got scanned in.”

“Great,” Susan grumbled. Then she raised her voice and spoke toward the phone. “Wasn’t it K through M that was supposed to be done just yesterday?”

“Yes,” the receptionist said. “I’m sure they got mixed up somehow—like the Anderson stuff. I’ll keep looking for the hard copy.”

“Thank you,” Susan said and the line clicked off. She looked at Sadie. “I can’t wait to call Detective Madsen and tell him that,” she said dryly before shaking her head. “Anyway, until I find the contents of the file I’m afraid I’m not much use to either of you. I remember that the birth certificate said the little boy was born in Boston.”

Jean at the library had said enough that Sadie had all but figured that out.

“But it didn’t have the father’s name on it?” Sadie asked.

“No, that’s why she was here—to fill in that blank.”

Oh, right. “And she didn’t say who the father was?” Sadie asked. “I’ve wondered if he could have . . . well, taken Trevor.”

“I’m afraid she never told me the name. In fact she was pretty secretive about it. She wanted to know exactly how the process of establishing paternity worked before she gave me any information.” She paused for a moment, pursing her lips slightly as if she were concentrating.

“There was, however, a cosigner on the bank accounts. One was for her use and one was a college fund set aside for her son, but the same cosigner was on both accounts so she couldn’t just clean them out; all withdrawals had to be approved.”

“Do you remember the name of the cosigner?” Sadie asked.

Susan closed her eyes in concentration. “His first name was Ronald—I remember because that’s my brother’s name. The last name was Bronson or Bradshaw or—”

“Bradley?” Sadie offered as her stomach lurched off a cliff.

Susan opened her eyes, smiling widely. She nodded her head. “That’s it. Ronald Bradley—but I think she called him Ron.”

Cinnamon-Ginger Cookies

1 cup butter

1½ cups white sugar

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

2 eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup quick oats

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

Cream butter and sugar. Add corn syrup and eggs. Mix well. Add dry ingredients to the butter mixture, and mix well. Roll into teaspoon-sized balls (refrigerate if dough is too soft) and bake at 350 degrees for about 6 minutes or until bottom edges are barely browned.

Remove cookies from oven and press flat with a glass dipped in sugar. (Spray bottom of glass with cooking spray for first “press” and then dip back into sugar between each cookie thereafter.) Let cookies cool 1 minute on baking sheet before removing to cooling rack.

To make sandwich cookies, spread a layer of cream cheese frosting between cookies.

Cream-Cheese Frosting

¼ cup butter or margarine

8 oz. cream cheese (Neufchatel or fat-free works fine)

½ teaspoon vanilla

1½ cups powdered sugar

Cream butter and cream cheese. Add vanilla and mix until smooth. Add powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached; you want a thick frosting to hold the cookies together. If frosting is too thick, thin with evaporated milk. If frosting is too thin, thicken by adding more powdered sugar. Spread between cookies when cookies are cool.

Makes about 2 dozen sandwich cookies (or 4 dozen single cookies).

Chapter 12

Sadie managed to thank Susan for her help without falling apart. Once outside the building she headed for her car where she sat for almost ten minutes, absorbing what she’d just learned. Ron had been at Anne’s house and he was a cosigner on her bank accounts. There was no way around it—Ron had to be Trevor’s father.

The betrayal ran deep. What a fool she was. “He moved her here,” she said out loud as she put details together. “He moved her to the same neighborhood I lived in?”

And Anne pretended to be Sadie’s friend, acting as if she were so needy. It was bad enough to be played by Ron, but Anne too? That cut twice as deep. And yet Sadie couldn’t even cry. She felt so spent of all emotion that to cry seemed like a waste of water at this point.

She shoved the keys into the ignition and started the car as a barrage of questions engulfed her. Why had she come here at all? Why hadn’t she listened to Detective Madsen when she had the chance and kept her nose out of it? And yet, would she rather not know any of this? Not really, she admitted. She just didn’t know what to do with the information now.

She threw the gearshift into drive and headed for home. It was almost two o’clock and she was ready to climb into bed and pull the covers over her head. Maybe she’d make her famous German chocolate cheesecake. It had taken second place at the state fair two years ago and had the perfect chocolate content to calm her nerves.

It wasn’t until she was driving past the library that she remembered the papers Jean had called about. “Forget it,” she said out loud. She wanted to put her hands over her ears and sing “La, la, la, la” like a six-year-old child. But as she came up on the last entrance into the library parking lot, she cranked the wheel to the right and pulled in. She didn’t even allow herself to think about her motives as she parked the car and went inside. She’d never been a quitter and even though she wanted to forget all of this, she had started something and after years of habitual follow-through she couldn’t stop now.

It only took a minute to pay the sixty-cent fee, claim the manila folder, and thank Jean. Sadie knew at the very least what Jean had done for her was a gray area—at the most she may have broken all kinds of federal library patron privacy regulations. Sadie made a mental note to bake her some sugar knots as a thank you gift.

As soon as she got back in the car, Sadie took a breath and opened the folder. The first few papers were regarding establishing paternity in Colorado and looked to be printed off some official Web site. Sadie felt her stomach tighten and she quickly put them behind the other papers. The next paper was an e-mail Anne had printed out.

On Oct 19, at 4:54 pm, Marla Boyd wrote:

Anne—

We’re very excited to have you join our team as well. The Boston office had nothing but positive things to say about you. They miss you. I think you’ll find our office and staff a lot like Boston, just on a much smaller scale. We’ve been very successful on the local level here—unprecedented for such a small town. As for training, since you’re a previous employee for the company, we don’t need to do the full regime. We’d like you to come in next Wednesday, just to brush up and get familiar with the Garrison office. You can start the following Monday. Let me know if there’s a problem; otherwise, I’ll see you Wednesday.

Sincerely,

Marla Boyd

Director of Human Resources, Garrison office

Riggs and Barker Realty

It wasn’t until the company identification at the bottom of the e-mail that Sadie caught her breath.

Riggs and Barker Realty.

It was the national real estate brokerage Ron had worked at for almost twenty years. He’d recently been promoted to senior sales manager of Northern Colorado.

And Anne had worked in the Boston office?

The main office?

The office that hosted the quarterly training conferences?

Sadie swallowed, but the lump in her throat didn’t go away. It was all laid out for her like a road map. Ron had met Anne in Boston. He’d fathered her child, left her in Boston, then brought her here two years later, and now he was getting her a job.

Sadie wanted to throw up. A million questions swirled in her head, but the big question was what purpose did Sadie serve? Ron had a young, beautiful mother of his child. Why date Sadie—a fifty-six-year-old widow who, though remarkably well-kept for her age, if she did say so herself, wasn’t exactly in her prime?

Why move Anne just down the street? That part didn’t make sense and she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. She thought back to what Anne had told her about Trevor’s father, that he had another family. Was Sadie the other family? Did somehow, for some depraved reason, he want both of them? She was going to be sick.

She started the car and was shifting it into gear when a young mother and her children walked in front of her car. There was a little girl who looked to be four or five, and a little boy close to Trevor’s age.

Trevor.

He was out there somewhere, alone and scared, missing his mother who he may or may not know was dead. Sadie refused to consider that he could also have been killed. The police had enough to do with investigating Anne’s murder; could they truly give Trevor the attention he needed? The attention she could give him?

New resolve rushed through her and she mentally put Anne and Ron and whatever may have existed between them on the back burner. She couldn’t give up. She’d come this far, learned so much, and she would tell Detective Cunningham everything as soon as she could. But facts were facts—Trevor was Ron’s son, Anne was his mistress, and he’d been at Anne’s house last night. That meant that Trevor must be with Ron. The whys and the how-comes were irrelevant in contrast to the need to find Trevor. She drove past the turn that would take her home.

She’d made her decision—it was time to talk to Ron.

To continue reading, click here.

- - -

Josi Kilpack is the author of 13 books, including five in the Sadie Hoffmiller culinary mystery series. Josi is happily married with four children, a fat dog, and a varying number of very happy chickens. Click here for more information about Lemon Tart, and here for information about Josi's other books.

{A&E} LDS Living Children's Book Club

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:06:00 -0700

by Kate Ensign-Lewis
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: We on the LDS Living staff recently sat down to pick some of our favorite children's books - both those we loved as children and those we love now. Maybe you'll come across a few new ones.

I'm always on the lookout for good children's books. There are a few classics that already adorn my son's library (Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, The Very Hungry Catterpiller, etc.) along with a few of my own picks, but one of my favorite things is when people give me books they have loved. Often they're books with which I'm not very familiar, but I can count on their quality because they've been loved by someone I know.

So, when my mother-in-law told me about her most recent book club, I thought it was brilliant. In this book club meeting, each of the participants was encouraged to bring one children's book they loved and one children's book their children loved. Often the women had vastly different favorites from their children (and even didn't really like the books their children did), but I thought it was a great way to compile a good children's library. And I wanted to replicate it.

Thus, here's our very own version of the Children's Book Club - our personal favorites of the children's book genre.

Kate Ensign-Lewis
Online Editor

The Jolly Postman, by Allen Ahlberg
This was one of my favorite books as a child. It connects Mother Goose characters through the postman, who takes letters to the residents. Each page features an actual envelope and letter, and the letters form a kind of continuing story of the nursery rhyme characters. If children today are anything like me, they will love opening and unfolding the letters and finding out what happened after the classic stories ended.

Skippyjon Jones, by Judy Schachner
This is one of my current favorites. I love both the storyline of the spunky, imaginative main character and the rhythmic language of this book. It's been awarded the E.B. White Read-Aloud Award, and with a combination of Spanish, colloquialisms, and rhymes, it's certainly easy to get into the role of storyteller with Skippyjon.

One, by Kathryn Otoshi
Another one of my current favorites. It's a simple, quick story, but it imparts an important lesson in language children can understand and appreciate. See, when Blue is bullied by Red, he doesn't know what to do. The other colors don't do anything for him, and soon they are bullied, too. But One soon comes along and encourages them to stand up for themselves, and in the end, each realizes he or she can "count." Great for teaching children about standing up to bullies.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
It's hard to tell what my 10-month-old son loves, but when he can't keep his mouth off it, we know it's a hit - and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is the book he always wants to chew on. It's got wonderfully bright colors and fun illustrations that even the youngest children can enjoy, with the added bonus for parents of helping to teach the alphabet.

Emily McClure
Editorial Intern

Miss Fannie’s Hat, by Jan Karon
Miss Fannie is a little old lady who has more hats than she can handle. To raise money for her church, she decides to sell one of her hats. As she tries to pick one hat, however, she remembers the stories that go with each hat, and it’s difficult to let go of any of them. I like that the story is inventive and engaging. This book made me realize that old people were young once too, and it teaches respect for that. The book also comes with little magnet hats that you can put on Miss Fannie.

Heckedy Peg, by Audrey Wood and Don Wood
 A mother has seven lovely children. She goes to the market one day to get them presents, but warns them not to let the witch, Heckedy Peg, into the house. Of course, they don’t listen, and the mother must use her wits to overcome the witch. I loved guessing how the mother would fool the witch, and the pictures kept me entertained for hours. They’re so intricate, and there’s always something new to find, like in an I Spy book.

King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub, by Audrey Wood and Don Wood
 King Bidgood’s in the bathtub, and no one can find a way to get him to come out. The king’s friends try many hilarious ways to entice him out of the tub, but instead, they get stuck in the tub, too. Who will discover the solution to this problem?

The story keeps children engaged as they try to guess what new crazy ploy the court will come up with. The pictures are also stunning and beautifully descriptive.

Ashley Evanson
Online Editor

Olivia, by Ian Falconer
This is one of my current favorites to read to my little girl. I love the black, white, and red charcoal artwork, and also how Falconer incorporates the real art of Degas and Pollock into the story. And Olivia the pig's fashion sense is something to be admired! It's a book that both children and adults can appreciate.

Puzzle Island, by Paul Adshead
My copy of this book is almost torn to pieces I read it so much as a child. It's the ultimate "I Spy" book, but with a twist. Along the edges of the illustration are scrambled letters that spell the name of an animal. Once you discover the animal, you have to search for it, hidden within the illustration. And what beautiful, tropical illustrations they are! I spent countless hours reading this book.

Harvey Potter's Ballon Farm, by Jerdine Nolen
I always wished this book was a true story. It is such an imaginative, whimsical story, I could see it as the next Disney Pixar film (truly!). The story follows Harvey Potter, a farmer who grows balloons. No one knows exactly how he does it, but with the help of the light of a full moon, one child catches a peek of just how Harvey Potter grows them.

Mandy Slack
Editorial Intern

Berenstain Bears books, by Stan and Jan Berenstain
I love the Berenstain Bears books because they teach good principles in a fun way. I remember as a kid learning about things like keeping my room clean or not eating too much candy from reading these books, but it wasn’t obvious to me, and it wasn’t boring.

Wayside School books, by Louis Sacher
These books are just hilarious. I picked one up a few months ago and it still cracked me up. I think it’s great for children’s books to teach principles, but sometimes it’s good to just laugh!

Join our club! Share your favorite children's books with us by leaving a comment below.

{A&E} Divine Digitization: LDS E-books

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:05:00 -0700

by Emily McClure
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Did you know that e-books aren't just for people who can't fit real books into their luggage? They're also a way for rare and out-of-print books to be made more available - and thanks to tireless work by some LDS scholars, some significant out-of-print books are now available to the general public.

I remember when I first learned about the joy of e-books. Up until the year 2009, I’d been only slightly interested in any form of digitized book; I loved being able to drive or work out while listening to a book on CD or iPod, but I was staunchly against e-books or Kindle versions of my favorites. To me, the feel of a book, its smell, the way I could watch my reading progress as I read page by page, was more important than keeping up technologically.

Then, in that fateful year, I started working at a library (perfect for me because I was surrounded by print books). As a library aide, when I was waiting at the desk for a confused patron to notice me, I wasn’t allowed to do anything that would distract my attention from patrons—no Facebook, no homework, no reading. All we were allowed to do was read an eBook or peruse the library databases. And that’s when I discovered the power of the e-book. I suddenly had hours of reading available to me whenever work was slow. And then I realized that, if I didn’t have room for a favorite book in my bookbag, I could also just connect to an e-book online without overstuffing my bag. Needless to say, I have continued my exploration of the digital literary world.

I recently discovered that the e-book isn’t just a poster child for the future of literature, nor is it just for those who can’t fit a print version of a book in their luggage. The e-book is also an invaluable method of preserving old books and making them available to more than just trained specialists. It’s almost like a form of family history, preserving the works of those revered authors whose books can’t hold up under non-digital strain.

BYU Studies recently came out with an e-books section on their website (click here to see it). Thanks to Deseret Book’s new e-reader app, Bookshelf, BYU is able to make certain titles accessible to thousands more people. So far, the section includes 21 books, many of which are out of print but are still popular. An example is Revelations on the Priesthood, a book which contains information on the priesthood from authors such as Edward L. Kimball, Ronald K. Esplin, and Marcus H. Martins (if you don’t know who these men are, it’s because this book is out of print). Despite its unavailability in the print world, Revelations on the Priesthood is still a very popular lesson supplement for a Relief Society or Sunday school class. A few of the books are compilations of useful articles on popular topics. One of the best-sellers in the section is Doctrines in the Book of Mormon: Articles from BYU Studies. The book includes over fifty years of doctrine published by BYU Studies and is not available in print form.

And if you’re not in the BYU Studies program, all these titles and more can be found at the source: Deseret Bookshelf. The Bookshelf app is free to download, and even better, first-time users automatically receive eight free e-book downloads (including Jesus the Christ and The Miracle of Forgiveness--click here to see the rest). Hundreds of other Church-related e-books are available for download.

Equally exciting is that you can download the scriptures to your phone. Don’t have room for your quad amongst the bag of cheerios and lesson manuals? Just use your downloaded scriptures! Forgot to bring your scriptures to church? Easy, they’ve already been downloaded! Aside from the fact that you can access your e-books via your smart phone (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android) at any place or time, you can also adjust font size, highlight or bookmark certain sections or pages, and conduct searches for key terms. It’s even difficult for me, a recent tourist of the digital continent, to see a downside to this kind of technology.

So, is the digital age worth looking into? Definitely . . . maybe. I think what I’ve discovered is that digital literature cuts out a lot of limitations that society has had up until about twenty years ago. If I want to find an article about priesthood responsibilities that was written in 1937, I don’t have to hunt down the original print version; I can just find it online. If I want to read six of my favorite books at the beach, I don’t have to load up a duffle bag, I can just download them on a Kindle.

Wait. No, I really haven’t been sold on Kindles yet. By the time I get around to liking Kindles, there’ll probably be something better to buy anyway.

{A&E} 5 Insights Gained from New Joseph Smith Papers Volume

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:04:00 -0700

by Patrick Dunshee
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Read the top five insights that one of the insiders on the Joseph Smith Papers Project gained from the newest volume.

The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Vol. 2 (1841-1843) is the second in the best-selling Journals series of The Joseph Smith Papers Project. The volume covers daily entries in Joseph Smith’s journals during much of the Nauvoo period, from December 1841 to April 1843, an exciting yet tumultuous time in the prophet’s life. And although this is not your normal bedtime reading (most journals would not qualify as a page-turner, particularly journals from this time period), elements of this volume are both fascinating and inspiring. Following are five insights gleaned from this important volume:

1. Joseph as a Dynamic Civic Leader

In addition to his role as prophet of the growing group of Church members, Joseph served as general of the Nauvoo Legion, as well as mayor and chief justice for the city of Nauvoo. Journal entries reference items handled in city council and other civic meetings, which provide a unique look into Joseph’s leadership and management style. One such entry describes an event that took place during a court proceeding, with Joseph presiding as chief justice. During the proceeding, Joseph noticed through the window two boys fighting across the street. He immediately excused himself and walked out of the courthouse and across the street to the two boys. After rebuking the bystanders for not intervening earlier, Joseph separates the two fighting boys, and says, according to the journal entry “Nobody is allowed to fight in this city but me.”

2. A Historic Moment: The Establishment of the Relief Society

Joseph Smith not only established the Relief Society in his own red brick store on March 17, 1842, but he was also actively involved in many of their meetings. The journal recounts him giving talks and teaching the sisters on a variety of gospel principles, including the priesthood, spiritual gifts, and how to live a virtuous life. I don’t know if he could see that this little group of twenty Relief Society sisters would someday number over six million, but the journal accounts show that he invested substantial time and effort in nurturing this new organization.

3. Joseph’s Hope for a New Year

The entry of 6 January 1842, shortly after the start of Joseph's Nauvoo journal, contains the heading "The New Year." The entry, possibly one of the few journal entries in the last years of the prophet's life to be dictated by him, is a particularly moving and hope-filled reflection at the start of a new year. One emphasis of the entry regards the importance of building the Nauvoo temple:   "The New Year has been ushered in and continued thus far under the most favorable auspices, and the Saints seem to be influenced by a kind and indulgent Providence in their disposition & means; to rear the Temple of the most High God, anxiously looking forth to the completion thereof, as an event of the greatest importance to the Church & the world, Making the Saints in Zion to rejoice . . ." 

4. Emma Hale Smith–Truly an Elect Lady

Included in this journal are three letters from Joseph’s wife Emma Hale Smith, which show great insight into her intelligence, character, and loyalty to the prophet. One letter, written in defense of Joseph as he is being sought for extradition on false charges of murder, shows how Emma utilizes elements of constitutional law to reason with authorities against unlawful extradition.

5. A Scribe Can Help When Keeping a Journal

Although Joseph took seriously the command to “keep a record,” history shows that it was a challenge for Joseph to keep it up on a regular basis. (Who can’t relate to this?) Over the years, Joseph employed several different scribes to keep his personal journals, each with varying results. One of his most consistent scribes was Willard Richards, who served as the single scribe for this volume, citing almost daily entries during the time from December 1841 through April 1843.

This new volume has several features that make its reading all the more valuable. In addition to a wonderful introduction to the Nauvoo period, this volume is chock full of reference materials that allow the reader to dig in to the details of life in Nauvoo. Biographical directories, geographical directories, maps, pedigree charts, a glossary . . . there’s even a set of ecclesiastical organizational charts to see who held what position.

Click here to learn more about the volume and see several videos with background informtion.

Patrick Dunshee is the manager of marketing and communications at Church Historian’s Press. Through his involvement with the Joseph Smith Papers Project, he has learned a lot about the prophet.

Excerpt: Jacob T. Marley

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:07:00 -0700

by R. William Bennett
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: For those who love Dickens' classic story A Christmas Carol, check out this exclusive excerpt of the new prequel Jacob T. Marley.

Do you love the classic story of remorse and redemption in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens? Then you'll love R. William Bennett's prequel, written in the style of Dickens, as he rewinds the story and focuses the spotlight on Scrooge’s miserly business partner, Jacob T. Marley, who was allowed to return as a ghost to warn Scrooge away from his ill-fated path.

To to find out more about this book, click here.

CHAPTER 1

Marley’s death was but a beginning. To those of us still mingling with the living, death may seem quite a terminal affair, yet in its vacuum new possibilities spring forth, not just for those left behind but for the dead as well. Marley’s death did, in fact, represent a beginning for several people. As the grand old narrator has so deftly and pleasantly informed us, it was at first a long, slow beginning of the transformation of one Ebenezer Scrooge. Indeed, he needed to percolate for seven long years, steeping himself in the boiling liquid of greed and avarice, before he was ready for that dreadful, wonderful night that began with Marley’s ghostly visit. It was a beginning for many kind souls who surrounded Scrooge’s life: Bob Cratchit, Nephew Fred, Tiny Tim, and even the boy who tried to sing a carol for Ebenezer outside the countinghouse on that Christmas Eve. For in each of those good folk, small seeds of ideas, known by some as inspiration, by others as compassion or goodly character, moved them to play a role in the redemption of the old, miserly Scrooge. And finally, it was a beginning for the detestable Jacob Marley himself.

Now, I suppose that one might be convinced, after some debate on semantics, of the nature of this event being a beginning for each of those aforementioned. Each, that is, but Jacob Marley. True, we know from the account of Scrooge that Jacob was doomed to wander the earth, visiting those he had not helped and feeling the anguish of what might have been, had he been the man he might. But that feels a bit more like an eternal ending rather than anything that deserves to be placed at the start of a conversation.

However, it was a most remarkable beginning for Jacob. For there was a great deal more happening to him than Scrooge could see from his chair by the fire in his bedroom. In fact, the greatest effect Jacob Thelonius Marley would have on this world would begin on Christmas Eve in the moments before he would leave his corpse behind and would stretch until . . .

Well, this is our story . . .

CHAPTER 2

To understand the time between Jacob’s death and his wispy visit with Ebenezer in the bedroom with the old Dutch tiles showing the scenes of Bible stories, one must go back and see what path led him to this spot wherein he was permitted to frighten Scrooge for his own good. It is said in heaven that a record is kept of men’s lives. If that be so, if it truly is important enough for heaven to document the moments of our existence, certainly it must be important enough for us to at least reference selected segments from that story to gain insight on how the man came to be who he was. For the corrupt character of Jacob Thelonius Marley was not made by deity; rather, it was a morbid distortion of who he had started out to be, a sad and rough-hewn statue chipped to existence from the stone of his potential by choice after choice of the man himself.

Jacob’s father, Joseph Marley, who was himself the son of Thelonius Marley, lived in the coastal community of Portsmouth Common. It was here he toiled in honest and dedicated fashion as a shipbuilder. Though he held a position of no particular note in the history of the place, he made adequate provision for his family. No crest adorned his gate (there was in fact no gate whatsoever), but he provided a middle-class home and often reflected that the fourth-greatest blessing in his life was the roof over his head, the floor under his feet, and the hearth that warmed both of those personal extremities. For the record, as I have given you this much of Joseph, he counted his blessings upward as such: For third, he named the five children who gave life to his home and meaning to his life. For second, Clarissa, who had been his companion, his equal, and his adoration for many years. For first, the One who granted him life.

Into this world, Joseph and Clarissa escorted five young Marleys, from Joseph Jr. to Melinda to William to Alfred to Jacob. To say that any of these were adorned with excess would defame both history and the principles of the family. But, as well, to say they felt want was equally false. They were fed, they were housed, and, indeed, they were loved, all to a point adequate to equip a young man or woman with reasonable armor against the vast and unpredictable battles for the souls of youth.

The hard and successful work of Clarissa and Joseph as parents is worthy to be documented, for of their five, they contributed four balanced and productive citizens of the British Empire. However, our tale is the story of the fifth of Marley. His entire life is not even our concern, though it could be told at some other place. Rather, we search for a particular event, the germination of a seed that, watered by some kind of cupidity, would take root in the pure-hearted young Jacob and find its flower in the deceitful old Marley.

The study of the man must begin with a note about his curious lineage. He was given as his middle name Thelonius, which is not an appellation generally worn well by young lads. However, in Jacob’s case, his full name was used for far more than a reprimand by his mother. Indeed, he wore the moniker of Jacob Thelonius Marley with pride. For, while not recognized the commonwealth over, in this small region of the family’s existence, the name Thelonius, spoken, quieted a room, bringing reflection to those who heard it and an unspoken reverence for the deed that had engendered such awe.

Thelonius Marley, father of Joseph, grandfather of Jacob, had worked at so many professions that if a person were to guess at one—say, a butcher—the odds are he most likely would have been right. Had another suggested in surprise that he knew the family and had thought Thelonius was a baker and he was sure others would validate that memory, he too would have been right. It was not that he could not sustain himself in one endeavor. Rather, for men of that time and place endowed with his meager upbringing, simple jobs of limited duration would regularly present themselves, and a worker distinguished himself not so much by what he did as how he was known for doing it. Thelonius labored in a way that was both consistent and admirable. He was known as an honest, hardworking man, and it was his reputation that kept him employed.

Thelonius’s life was permanently imprinted with the mark of his character on the evening of January 6, 1734. Up to that point in the winter season, the weather had been good to southern England, mild to the extreme of being almost balmy, and nobody was ungrateful, as it demanded less coal in the hearth and lessened the usual stinging rebuke of the cold on the face every morning and evening. In fact, nobody could be more grateful than St. Crispin’s Hall, the old parish workhouse in Portsmouth Common within which those who needed its salvation lived.

A new workhouse had been erected on Warblington Street, St. Crispin’s being the original old warehouse donated to the cause. While the intent was to close its doors, and rightfully to tear down the decrepit structure, the great numbers of poor necessitated its remaining open. It barely stood against the winds that so frequently raced off the waters and pelted the little shore village. So a mild winter was indeed a welcome respite.

But sometime between the evening of January fifth and the morning of the sixth, the weather turned. Father Winter visited with a fury and caught up in his belated delivery of seasonal reprimand. The temperatures descended to naught on the scale and the stoves and furnaces of Portsmouth Common roared to greater life. Through the walls of St. Crispin’s, so inadequate to brave the change in weather, the cold wind left lines of frost on the inside of all the wooden seams, stitching the wall planks together with a white thread. As the day and then evening wore on, one patron after another would place more fuel in the stove in the main room, unaware that someone just before them had done the same, too impatient to see the effect. As a result, the fire grew hotter and hotter. Sometime after dark, the wall behind the stove gave in to the intense heat and spontaneously combusted in an explosion of flame. Given the position of that partition in the center part of St. Crispin’s, the fire spread up through the spine of the building, affecting all rooms within minutes.

By the time Thelonius passed St. Crispin’s on the way home from his employment at the chandler’s, flames were spreading across the roof. Various residents of the workhouse stood across the street wrapped in whatever clothes they had grabbed as they fled. Thelonius ran to the crowd by the main door where several women were sobbing.

As though his presence were a question asked, a cook turned to him and said, “A shame, a real shame, those children upstairs . . .”

But the end of his sentence dissipated into the frigid air like the steam of an anxious breath, falling on no ears but his own, as Thelonius sprinted into the building and up the stairs. Within a few minutes he emerged, his overcoat bulging. Running to a burly ropemaker who stood mesmerized at the sight of the inferno, Thelonius spread his wool coat to reveal a small child clinging to his waist.

The worker stared in disbelief. “How in the world did you—”

“Take him!” Thelonius yelled. The man quickly followed the command and grabbed the child as an anxious mother ran to his side to reclaim what she thought she had lost.

Again Thelonius ran into the building. Again he emerged, this time with a soot-covered girl coughing and clasping his neck.

The distraught mothers realized that if any hope could resist the flames, it would come through this newly anointed patron saint. The five remaining women screamed as he came out yet a third time, yelling names and descriptions of their children. Every other man in that small street stood frozen, watching Thelonius with both respect and horror as he turned into the seething hell again. Once more he emerged, and again and again, delivering three more charges to their mothers.

One last woman stood, looking at him imploringly and knowing the gravity of what she asked him with her pleading eyes. She uttered not a word, but grabbed his hand and stared into his face.

He nodded and turned, running into the building that was more flame than wood.

The minutes passed. Some later said they thought they had seen his feet coming down the stairs, visible now through the widening hole that had been the front door. However, at that moment, St. Crispin’s fell in upon itself, folding its walls, its stories, and its lives into an explosion of heat and burning timbers, claiming Thelonius and the final child for whom he had given his life.

It took three days for the remains of the building to cool. When they could walk across the mass, all searched with but one purpose—to find some sign of the child and Thelonius. Finally, beneath the collapsed stairwell, they found their remains, Thelonius’s body charred, all earthly beauty gone from the man. Within his coat, the lifeless body of a small boy clung to his waist, unburned where Thelonius had tucked him. The child had died from inhalation, not ten yards from the aching arms of his mother.

In time, the debris was cleared and a new building was erected for some different purpose. To any passerby, it was nondescript and housed some element of Portsmouth Common’s shipbuilding economy. However, on the northeast corner, one could find a stone, three up from the ground, with this simple inscription:

THELONIUS
HE GAVE HIS ALL

The reason for this particularly detailed diversion is to make a singular point—Jacob Marley was given his middle name in honor of the grandfather he never knew. Everyone in the southwest of Britain could recite the story, and when the boy was asked his name, his inevitable reply was Jacob Thelonius Marley, with an air of substantiating his own character, having claimed the bloodline of the great saver of the children of St. Crispin’s.

Jacob found nothing wanting to serve for example and inspiration. Indeed, he carried in the cradle of his name a reminder as his constant companion, a memorial to as good a man as there could be. Yet, it is worthy to note that as the years wore on, Jacob reduced his name to Jacob T. Marley, allegedly to narrow the complexity of a simple introduction. In truth, Jacob had grown tired of the explanation of his name for those who did not know of Thelonius, and of the expectations of him from those who did. As he aged, he would shorten his name still further to Jacob Marley, leaving the T behind him on the shoulder of his particular highway of life. He offered no one an explanation, having no need to justify anything at his station. To himself, he asserted the demand for increased simplicity in the many signatures that were a part of his chosen profession. Yet, deep inside the crusty old miser, he knew that what he hated most was to be reminded of a notion he had taught himself was an unwise transaction—to give too much for too little. The sense of it bothered him, and he expurgated at least part of that from his life by leaving a character in the gutter.

What, then, turned the man? What was so powerful that he discarded that middle name and all that it symbolized? We all ascend or descend in steps, the journey to the high road or the low taken in many increments, the sum total determining our eventual destination. Yet, in the case of Marley, there was a moment, a particular event that transformed Jacob’s future and that of all those with whom he would associate.

It occurred in Jacob’s youth. It was not negative in its intent, being a circumstance in which the motivation had been to bolster the spirits of the young boy. He was but twelve years of age at the time, and in his course of study of mathematics had demonstrated an unusual comfort with the subject. His instructor had given the class one remarkably difficult problem to decipher. Some gave up; most tried and failed. A very few got the right answer—among them, Jacob. But what particularly caused him to stand out were both the speed with which he did it and the method of derivation he used, showing a maturity in his analytical skills beyond the dozen full seasonal turns he had spent on the earth.

“Jacob,” the old schoolmaster had said as he pulled him aside that evening, “I want you to know something. You have a gift, young Jacob. Numbers seem to be a native tongue to you. I urge you to further develop this talent and ready yourself to use the skill in some capacity of service to your fellow man.”

Jacob blushed and looked at the ground, stammering out a “thank you.” At this one point, the episode might have contributed to Jacob’s fulfilling what had been his destiny in life: to take his brilliance with calculation and use it to upgrade the human condition. Indeed, virtuous endeavors great and small awaited his contribution. He would have made Marley a household word, in the warmest of terms. Had he but bid thanks and run home to tell his parents, which they always encouraged (“’tis not boasting to tell Mum and Dad!”), he might not have found his way into this story and the one that preceded its telling. It was what happened in the next few seconds that changed the very course of his existence. It would not be an exaggeration to imagine that heaven and hell watched the event, each wrestling for the future of the young man. At this sad moment, some errant germ, a mere fleck of an insidious influence, found its way into the virtuous turn of Marley’s earth.

“Young Marley,” said the schoolteacher, apparently not having felt he had achieved the desired effect with his compliment, “you are, without a doubt, the single best mathematician I have ever taught.”

Of those thirteen words, there was one that held Jacob’s attention. He knew them all and had used the sum of them in sentences for many years. But it was the particular arrangement of the thirteen, specifically in the way this one word would betray the other twelve. The word was best.

Marley had been no stranger to compliments, having been a boy of greater than average character. He had shown virtues in many areas, which is not to say he did not suffer at times the foibles of youth.

Yet this word, this word! “Best!” Though it seems quite unlikely, Jacob had never thought of his own accomplishments in relation to those of his peers. He had only considered what ought to have been done and whether he did it well. But now he was given a yardstick with which to measure himself against others. And in the first taking of that measure, he was found by this revered teacher to be unequaled. He was the best—and he liked it very much.

Do not think he walked out of that school a totally corrupted young man. To the outward eye, he had not changed. But deep within, by reviewing over and over the pleasure that came with those words, he had planted and was starting to cultivate a vine that would in time, from its roots in his ego, reach to entwine and suffocate his very soul.

The warning is given us all that there are seven things which are an abomination to the Lord. One school of thought would suggest that the more of these possessed by one person, the more gnashing there will be at his day of reckoning. However, this makes no account for extreme proficiency in one area. In six of these seven, Marley had no interest, other than the degree to which his one solid vice spilled over into the others. But the seventh—first both in his heart and in the Maker’s warning—-he had acquired to a level of excellence unrivaled by any man.

It was pride.

Indeed, there is reasonable argument that pride is itself the seedbed of all other sins. Whether that is true or not is perhaps for a different analysis, but certainly Marley’s field of pride was a spectacular crop without comparison. This one vice he nurtured to be of more weight than the seven combined in most men, if not seventy times seven.

To tell the whole of Marley’s life would be of little value. It took many years for pride to manifest its impact. Indeed, he was at first, after the crucial event, just as he had always been, with far more good than bad in him. But as time went by, the leaves of his deceit began to show. For the next several years, he tried to dress it, conspiring within himself to keep it behind his garden wall. With a practiced behavior, he used the words and actions born of his heart and fostered by his pure nature as a younger man to build a façade of character that covered an increasingly empty soul. As the bootblack covers scuffs, so he polished and repolished his image while sharpening his skills. However the cuts and damages of ill care of the leather could not forever be hidden. In his development, he eventually cast aside the dye and began to nurture what one might think of as the last bit of integrity he possessed—-to be who he was.

By the time Jacob was a man, there was never any doubt of his purity. Indeed, no one would debate the complete and total lack of it. He had placed his bushel so firmly and completely upon his light that most would attest the flame was out, the candle melted and sold for its wax, and the darkness a permanent attribute of the hill of Jacob Marley.

Marley forged his path into his financial profession in an ordinary way, apprenticing through all the ordinary roles. What was not ordinary was his skill in the position. Not that he could count better, for how many ways are there to count? A stack of twenty shillings is a pound to any man, no matter how proficient. Jacob’s unique trait was in knowing what could be done with those shillings. Where any of his peers could turn a pound into a half crown more, Marley found a way to make it two. He finessed the principles of compounding both his money and his sin as he used this knowledge to build contracts that would stand firm against legal challenge while exacting from his customers more than they had anticipated. The spoken word, to Jacob Marley, was irrelevant. Contract was law, and whatever words needed to be said to get to contract were appropriate if they served that end. While some would call it lying, to Marley, it was simply business. Words would pass from existence in time, whereas contracts would last—in this truth he based his only doctrine, and all his means served this end.

He eventually gained his own clients and, quite to the dismay of his mentor, opened his own countinghouse. He had gained some level of prominence. He lived in London, the only place to do business. He accumulated enough wealth to purchase a home, a rarity. He had found the ideal space, a house built by a Dutch merchant one hundred years prior. Unlike the other homes on this street, it was set back, allowing for a courtyard in front, and assuring Jacob of his privacy from the throngs of the dull and dirty on London’s streets. He retained three rooms for himself; the others were let out to businesses, assuring Jacob he would not be bothered by neighbors.

The stair in the entryway was grand. Not that Jacob ever intended to entertain, but occasionally he would meet with a business associate in the parlor, and his ability to negotiate began when the gentleman would gaze in awe at the wide, sweeping staircase and wonder to himself what sort of man of business was successful enough to wander this kind of house.

The only feature that bothered him was in the bedroom. Here, the fireplace had been adorned with tiles, each depicting one of the many familiar stories of the Holy Scriptures. Done in the blue and white delft style of the Dutch artisans, the artwork was superb. In other circumstances this room might have been reserved for a guest room and the commodious hearth would have been an inspiration and conversation piece. But to Marley, who had no guests, each tile called to him, a faint cry from the past when these stories had been the foundation upon which he was raised. He needed none of it! He had found his gift and he was using it and had no room for the introspective condemnation of his ways.

After he took residence in the cold, lonely house, he paid a workman to come and remove the tiles. At first, when the man examined the hearth, he stated that he needed additional tools. When he was due to return, he seemed to conveniently forget the location. Next, when he finally did arrive, he told Marley that the tiles were inset in a way that would ruin the entire fireplace if he tried to remove them. Not accustomed to failure in any endeavor, Marley raised his voice at the worker: “If you are not skilled enough at your trade to remove these infernal tiles, I must find someone who is.”

The man did not flinch. He only looked at the hearth and then turned and calmly received the darts of Marley’s stare.

“I can remove them, Mr. Marley,” he said softly. “What I cannot do is preserve them in the process. Someone far greater than me made these. See here, sir,” he went on, as he pointed out the fine points of each picture. “These were done by master craftsmen. There are many imitations today, but they lack the depth of feeling in each image. If these were lost in the removal, I could not redo them.”

“I don’t want them redone and I don’t want them preserved! Of what matter is that?” Marley stammered in frustration and growing anger.

The man waited, his pondering being a function not of wondering what to say, but rather, of giving himself an assurance he said the next thing most correctly. “Once a thing is created, Mr. Marley, I believe it has purpose to it. If I could improve upon these, I would readily remove them. But I cannot. The hand that made these had talents I do not even understand. For me, the loss would be a tragedy, and I fear I would frustrate the intent of their creator.”

“You had better leave,” Marley ordered.

“Sir, I would also tell you that when these are taken off, with care or with force, you will need to replace all the facing here about. It will be the cost of an entire new fireplace.”

Marley was, in the balance, a skinflint. He had accepted many a disagreeable option for the sake of saving a farthing. This was the case with his fireplace, and he finally decided to suffer the daily encounter with Elijah calling fire down on idol worshippers rather than part with any coin.

Time went by and Marley labored. One by one, his parents and siblings abandoned their frustrated pleadings for a relationship. His brothers went on to trades of modest but honest work. None of them achieved any kind of wealth or significance in the worldly sense, but all were happy. This fact annoyed Marley. It was not his own lack of joy in comparison to his siblings that bothered him. It was their total ignorance of their own condition that set his anger afire. They clearly understood nothing about how poor they were. They wasted money on trips to the seashore and children and turkeys at Christmas, and other things for which no investment could be compounded.

His father passed, and Marley could not justify the trip to the funeral, based on the business that demanded his attention. Soon thereafter his mother lay on her deathbed, surrounded by her children, her final words a plea for Jacob’s soul. His sister sent him a post upon their mother’s passing, telling him of such and imploring him to come to her memorial service. She also asked for his help to secure a decent coffin and place of rest. Marley did cover the cost of the funeral and the coffin and the plot and the flowers.

“Melinda,” he wrote simply, “I have given to this messenger all the funds required to properly lay our mother to rest. Should there be any extra, you and the others may split it equally, or unequally, as you decide.”

In reading this, Melinda’s heart rejoiced. Perhaps an angel had shown compassion for Clarissa’s appeal in Jacob’s behalf and there would be a chance to redeem her brother back from the darkness in which he lived. However, her brief cause for hope was dashed as quickly as it came.

“In return for this, I ask one thing of you and our brothers. I am a busy man. I have no time for frivolities. I request that none of you attempt to contact me again. We are all adults and must make our own ways in the world. Should you not possess the industry, thrift, or intelligence to cover your expenses in this life, that is your pit into which you have dug yourself and one you must climb out of on your own, or be content to lie within. Family gatherings to me are a nuisance [which was an odd observation, given that Marley had never attended one] and of no contribution to my condition. I take my leave of you, and wish you would do so of me as well. Signed, J. Marley.”

Though his family members honored his request, they mourned. No communiqué was ever offered again. Melinda and her brothers carried Jacob’s absence as a weight upon their hearts for the rest of their lives, a sorrowful corner of their otherwise happy existence. In visits with one another, they occasionally spoke of Jacob in hushed tones and offered prayers in his behalf. “Uncle Jacob” was no more than a figment of the imagination to their children, a character from a book who came to life only in the exaggerated tales they told one another of his evil ways.

Marley, however, once he had sealed the note and handed it to the courier, never thought of them again.

He had no friends, only acquaintances built in the course of business. There were no women in his life. There was not sufficient recompense in such a relationship to justify it.

So Marley went his way in the world, confining himself to the narrow environment of the Exchange, his countinghouse, and his investments. With each entry in his ledgers, his purse became richer, and the rut of his life deeper.

He was indeed an unpleasant man, wearing his greed in his countenance. Those with a shred of goodness in them went to any length to avoid him. Even those aligned with Marley in their self-absorbed version of morality despised him, for he turned their common iniquity against them. As necessary to conduct a deal, they wore a mask of pleasantries to spend time with him, convincing neither themselves that they were fooling him, nor him that they meant any of it.

One particular specialty of Marley and his countinghouse was that of rent assessment for his clients. Though landlords were terrified of him, they saw in his compassionless dedication to collections a means to assure their own income, and enjoyed the benefit while remaining at arm’s length from his heartless deeds. Thus, he built quite a portfolio of properties. It was said that when delinquent tenants saw Marley’s carriage approaching, they simply began to pack. Most of the properties were closer to dereliction than quaintness. Marley found the lessees of these residences to be the worst payers, a condition he had turned to his advantage. When someone fell behind on their payments, he would negotiate a division with the owner, keeping for himself the greater portion of what he could collect rather than the standard percentage he was normally allowed in the contracts. Accustomed to getting nothing at all from desperate tenants, his clients took the deal as readily as Marley took them.

One particularly cold and dreary February day, Marley settled in his carriage to travel to Camden Town. His errand was to settle the negligent debt of a young couple in one of the properties he managed. Here, in a small, modest apartment, they had settled just after their marriage two years prior. For twenty-one months, they had been timely in their payments. But at that time, industrialization in the factory had eliminated the man’s position. They had paid in full that month, but their payments had diminished in amount in the subsequent two periods, each time with a promise that they would make up the difference in the following payment with a new job the husband would surely secure. Marley let them stay those two months, but not because he believed a word they said. He had seen this many times before. People would sell all they had to pay their rent. He allowed them enough time not to find a job but rather to liquidate all their assets, realizing all he possibly could from their dwindling resources until they had exhausted their funds. Sensing when that moment occurred had become an art form, and Marley was its grand master. This was that day, and he swooped in for his kill.

As he arrived, he walked stiffly to the door, rapped twice, waited as long as he felt he should—about five seconds—and then rapped again. He knew they knew he was coming.

The door opened slowly and only partway, as if the narrowed entrance might keep out the message from this unwelcome visitor. With a practiced regimen, Marley tipped his hat in deference to protocol rather than to respect and, at the same time, placed his foot next to the doorjamb. After multiple experiences with this marking of territory, he had begun having all his boots made with reinforced sides and soles to brace his foot against the likely response.

This time, the door did not slam. Instead, from around the edge of the border between warmth and cold, home and homelessness, life and death, a somber man appeared, ramrod straight in his posture. He was neither friendly nor resentful. He was weary.

“Mr. Marley,” he said as he lowered his head in the slightest nod.

“Mr. Cummings,” Marley said perfunctorily. “You know why I am here.”

“I do,” the man replied softly. He looked past Marley at the light snow being whipped into small ice-darts by the persistent wind. “Come in.”

Marley did not want to come in. He wanted to tell them to leave, handing them their eviction notice to make it official, and then depart. He had showed up in person, rather than mailing the document, only because he found it hastened any court deliberations should he be challenged. Everything needed to show a return, and that was the yield afforded him by taking half a day in the cold to deliver his ominous order.

“I am quite fine here. I want to inform you that due to your late and insufficient payments—”

“Mr. Marley,” the man said so gently that even though it was an interruption, it sounded as though Marley had given way in his speech for the comment. “I ask you in to try to keep the warmth in the home for my wife’s sake. Please, may we talk inside?”

Ah, Marley thought. His wife’s sake. Should he continue to stand outside, and the man present that his wife was swollen with some dreaded illness, Marley’s coldness both in his spirit and in that which he allowed in the home might be held against his case, tying up the disposition of this home for weeks.

Rather than reply, he stepped in, registering his dissatisfaction with the request by bumping Cummings as he shuffled past him.

When the door shut, Cummings turned, and Marley picked up where he had left off.
“—it is necessary to have you vacate the home, as you have forfeited on your contract.”

Marley stuck out his hand from the folds of his coat and presented an envelope, sealed with a wax stamp. “Here is the eviction notice. You are to be out by end of day today. You may take your possessions, but if you wish to leave them, you will be assessed—”

“Mr. Marley,” Cummings said with some alarm, “I know that we have not met our obligations and that we are due our consequences, but my wife . . .” His voice trailed off as he gestured to the chair by the table, where, unnoticed up to this point by Marley, sat the most pregnant woman he had ever seen. She was indeed swollen, and, to Marley’s perspective, it was with an illness. It was the malady contracted by so many newlyweds that, in love or foul misjudgment, yields the sickness of noise, discomfort, unnecessary expense, and trouble. Marley was no fool. He knew the race depended upon the continued addition of new generations, but what a bothersome, inconvenient way to bring them into the world! And, it seemed to him, most couples selected the most inopportune time financially to take on this investment burden that would never repay them.

“Mr. Marley,” Cummings continued, “my wife is in no condition to pack our things and even worse to find herself in the cold. She is but one or two weeks from bearing our baby, maybe even less.” He looked at her with concern, then back at Marley with pleading in his eyes. “We need only a month; we can find arrangements when we have gotten a week past the birth. She is proud and has not wanted to share our condition with her family. But I believe she will now reconsider. I give you my word we will be out thirty days from now.”

Marley felt his rage rise within him. He shook the letter at the couple. “Your word. Your word,” he said slowly, trying to draw out the phrase in disgust. “This envelope is the evidence of how you keep your word! And her pride! So, I must bear the loss in the selfish display of her pride? I would suggest that a little humility is long overdue at this point. Do not make me to suffer at the sin of her pride!”

“But, Mr. Marley, you know my position was eliminated—”

“None of my affair,” Marley said brusquely. “I have no interest in your personal business. You made a contract with me. I kept up my end of it. You did not. You forfeited, per the language of the agreement. In fact, if you read it carefully, you will see I have already given you two extra days.”

“Two days, Mr. Marley, is appreciated, but is not enough. She is so fragile. This pregnancy has been long in coming and difficult in its progression. I fear for her health and our baby’s.”

Marley’s eyes narrowed to slits as he glared at Cummings. “Fears you should have considered when you decided to have a child. Surely the term of a pregnancy was no surprise to you—-a simple calculation would have told you that this baby would be here in the cold of February. You made either a bad choice or no choice—-both of which you, not I, are responsible to resolve.”

“But sir, I did not choose to change the factory, to put in the machines that did our work. I was employed well—-you even said so when we signed the agreement. It was not—”

“Enough!” barked Marley. “There is no end to this discussion that will lead to any outcome other than one of two options. The first is your producing all your back payments and, according to the agreement in the case of late arrangements, paying two months forward for my security; the second is your being out by the end of today. I trust you do not have the payments?” he asked with a sarcastic sneer.

With that, the room was silent. Marley had avoided the gaze of the pregnant wife. She slowly stood, and the movement caught him off guard, causing him now to reactively turn and look in her direction. As he met her eyes, he knew through his years of managing the affairs of the indolent what he would see. There would be tears, pleading in her face. Nothing but manipulative emotions designed to separate Marley from the fixed and appropriate outcome of his settlement.

However, he was surprised. This woman was not crying, and she most certainly was not afraid of Marley, or, he surmised, of anything. She held her protruding belly beneath one hand as she walked toward Marley, never releasing his stare.

Marley too was afraid of nothing, and though this moment made him uncomfortable, he refused to back away as she drew closer. When she came within a yard of Marley, she stopped and, with her other hand, reached behind her neck and unfastened a thin gold chain. Without ever moving her eyes, she held the necklace up between their faces. From it was suspended a single pearl, small but brilliant. Marley was momentarily startled as its translucence almost seemed to draw in light from the woman and reflect it outward.

“If I give you this, how many additional months would it buy us?” she asked with a firm defiance.

How an average woman such as this had come into possession of a gem this remarkable was beyond his imagination. Swiftly and silently he assayed the value of the tribute, deliberately stifling his facial expression from displaying his impression. He calculated the most conservative price the piece would command, most likely far below what he would be able to gain in negotiations. He calculated that in rent, and then halved that number of days. Then he halved it again. And again, and again. Finally, he halved it one more time.

“Three days,” he replied coldly, never releasing her gaze and never raising a hand toward the pearl.

Cummings gasped, knowing that the value of the necklace was far more than a fraction of a month’s rent. But his wife did not waver in her stare, or in her suspension of the necklace in Marley’s line of sight.

“So be it, then—take it!” She did not move one inch to make it easier for Marley to grasp the necklace. With an only slightly perceptible regret in her voice, she said, “It was a gift from my brother.”

Marley did not miss that minute fluctuation. Weakling, he thought. For a moment, he had actually admired her resolve.

He reached up and took the necklace, placing it in his coat pocket. With that, he removed a watch and, looking at it, said, “It is a quarter to two. At a quarter to two on Thursday, you need to be out. I will be here at that time. If you are not gone, I will return at a quarter past two with the constable. He will deal with you appropriately.”
He tipped his hat incongruously to the couple he had just condemned, and then he stepped out into the cold.

As he walked to his carriage, he heard not a sound from the house—no wailing, no curses. Of course, had there been any, he would not have paid them any attention. He was oblivious to all such: the emotions, the pain, the concern. Oblivious to the final plea implicit in the simple comment that “it was a gift from my brother.” Rather, he was rapidly calculating his gain on the necklace.

At twenty minutes before two on Thursday, Marley’s carriage worked its way across the cobblestones to what, in five minutes’ time, would be the previous home of the Cummings family. A loaded cart stood by the door, the husband emerging with a last item to be placed on the meager pile of their possessions.

The carriage driver leapt down, opened the door for Marley, and placed a step beneath it to help him out into the raw wind and driving mixture of sleet and snow. Marley stepped into the apartment, followed by Mr. Cummings, tipped his hat in the slightest possible manner, and then began speaking without bothering to look at the couple.

“I will inspect the house. Any damage done, filth left, or inconvenience created by remaining possessions will result in assessments. You will pay me before departing. Do you understand?”

Mr. Cummings gently said to Marley, “I assure you, Mr. Marley, there is no damage, what little we have is gone, and the home is clean.”

His wife walked up to Marley and, with a steady voice and fire in her eyes, said, “Cleaner by a great deal more than when we moved in.”

Marley looked back at her and then mumbled, “Good. As it should be.” Then, turning to the man, he said, “Nonetheless, I will inspect it and notify you if I see a problem. Wait here.”

He left the couple standing in the entryway as he surveyed the home. His practiced eye made quick work of the environment, knowing what problems typically were created and, of those, which ones he would levy the greatest penalty for. He was frustrated to find nothing.

“All right, then,” he said. “Out and be gone with you!”

The threesome stepped out into the cold, dreary storm. Marley watched as the woman took her place between the pull shafts to help her husband haul the small collection of their things to who knew where. Her husband gently took her hands off the rails, kissed her on the cheek, and then lifted her to sit on the front of the cargo box in a spot that he had obviously prepared for her.

“Fool,” Marley muttered. “Doesn’t he even understand that putting her there will make his job harder?”

Cummings put a harness around his shoulders and lifted the handles. Then, straining against the weight, the resistance on the wheels from the ruts of frozen snow, and the thousand stings of the driving weather, he pulled.

Marley began walking back to his carriage.

There are times in our lives when we remember things for no known purpose, the memory sitting in our pocket like a lonely button fallen from some unknown garment that we save in the anticipation of one day having a flash of inspiration, “This belongs to my old black coat!” For some reason, this day, Marley heard in the back of his mind the departing words of the Cummingses, and they stuck with him.

“John, will you be all right?”

“Sure, I am good enough. Hold tight so you don’t fall, Fan. Here we go.”

It was of so little consequence at that moment that, although he took note of it as he put his hand on the carriage door, he had forgotten about it by the time he was seated. Raising his voice, he rudely commanded his driver to hasten back to his office.

Later that day, Marley sat quite still at his desk. His elbow rested upon the broad surface as he dangled the pearl necklace in front of him. Several times in the last hour, he had concluded to visit his favorite precious stones dealer and sell the pearl. It should be pointed out, so as not to mislead anyone with regard to Marley having a favorite anything, that this man was just so approbated not because he was particularly good at his trade, and certainly not because Marley cared for him, but in reality because he was most likely to succumb to Marley’s withering protestations in a negotiation.

Yet, each time he would make an effort to push his chair back and rise to the task, he paused, bumping into some force of uncertainty he could not quantify. The market was good enough, he had the time this afternoon, and he certainly would have liked to dispose of any reference to this -strong--willed woman who had left him so unsettled. But he could not move. Thus repelled, he stared now at the little innocent gem, attempting to draw from its luster a cause for the hesitation, as though it might surrender some reason to his practiced gaze. No insight revealed itself.

Finally, he yielded. Marley opened the writing tray in his desk. It was particularly thick, but should someone remove it from its rollers, he would find it to be surprisingly light. Marley triggered a small clasp on its underbelly and lifted out the inside of the drawer, revealing a shallow but secure and secret compartment nested in what should have been solid wood. Therein lay a few papers, a key, and some other items Marley did not want to deposit in the usual places. He took a blank ledger page and folded it into an envelope around the pearl necklace, pushed it to the back of the compartment, and shut the top.

“In time,” he said aloud to himself.

To read the rest of the book, you can purchase it at deseretbook.com.

{A&E} Ultimate Guide: Christmas Reading

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:05:00 -0700

by SarahJo Ciotti
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Here are a few essential books to curl up with this Christmas season.

As the holidays come each year, excitement builds, decorations go up, and Christmas songs play on the radio. In celebration of all the hubbub, we’ve compiled a list of essential Christmas stories to read, whether on your own, with your children, or the whole family.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

“Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!”   

These famous words mark the beginning of a tale that renews the spirit of joy and caring that is Christmas. This book warms our hearts with favorite memories of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet-to-be—and will remind us with laughter and tears about the true meaning of Christmas.

A Christmas tradition for many, including President Thomas S. Monson, this story is always a delight to read and reread during the Christmas season.

Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright

Newspaper reporter Hope Jensen uncovers the remarkable secret behind the “Christmas Jars,” glass jars filled with coins and bills anonymously left for people in need. But along the way, Hope discovers much more than the origin of the jars. When some unexpected news sets off a chain reaction of kindness, Hope's greatest Christmas Eve wish comes true.

Read the book that has spawned a new Christmas tradition that has spread across the country—and even the world. A story of mystery and secrecy, the story behind the Christmas Jars is one of discovery and kindness, and wishes coming true.

Jacob T. Marley by R. William Bennett

A prequel to Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, R. William Bennett rewinds the story and focuses the spotlight on Scrooge’s miserly business partner, Jacob T. Marley, who was allowed to return as a ghost to warn Scrooge away from his ill-fated path. Following the events leading to his death, perhaps we will discover what happened that bound Marley in chains after death.

Written in a voice reminiscent of Dickens, Jacob T. Marley is a masterfully crafted story of remorse and redemption and sure to become a Christmas favorite.

The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore and illustrated by Tom Browning

The classic poem paired with the original illustrations by award-winning Tom Browning brings to life the excitement and fun that children and adults alike have enjoyed for generations. The visions that this book will leave with your family will be memories to cherish together forever.

The Forgotten Carols by Michael McLean

The Forgotten Carols tells the story of a nurse whose empty life is changed when a new patient recounts the story of Christ's birth as told by little known characters in the nativity story. The accounts from the innkeeper, the shepherd who fell asleep, the midwife who helped Mary, Joseph, and many others help her discover what the world has forgotten about Christmas, and open her heart to the joy of this special season.

Since this is a reading list, we’re sharing the book with you (there’s also a newer children’s version out—you can check it out here), but this is a timeless classic that encompasses a CD of songs, a DVD, and best of all, a show that has been enjoyed by sold-out audiences nationwide. Now you can feel the warmth of the Christmas spirit from the stage performances in your own home.

Why Christmas Trees Aren't Perfect by Richard Schneider

In a beautiful forest far away, Small Pine aspires to one day be the royal Christmas tree. Small Pine is perfect on the outside - until the tree's warm heart inspires it to give shelter to cold rabbits and birds and food to hungry deer. Afraid his hopes are lost, Small Pine in fact becomes the Queen's choice because his appearance reminds her of the meaning of Christmas.

This is a beautiful story about true "perfection," and is a wonderful reminder about Jesus Christ's love.

The Mansion by Henry Van Dyke

John Weightman surrounded himself with beauty and riches and was very careful with how he spent his money. “No pennies in beggars’ hats,” he liked to say. Until one night he dreamed that he died . . .

John travels to the Celestial City, where each individual will be rewarded with a mansion based on treasures set aside. Thinking that his mansion will be the most grand, John Weightman learns what it truly means to lay up treasures in heaven.

A favorite of President Thomas S. Monson, who rereads this story every year, the 100th anniversary edition contains an illustrated abridged version for children as well as the original unabridged story.

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans

A couple and their 4-year-old daughter are welcomed into the home of an ailing widow as her caretakers. Before long, their relationship with the widow becomes more special than any one of them could have realized. These tender relationships and real-life struggles are the backdrop for unraveling a mysterious secret that pulls the reader through this holiday classic. Originally written simple to express his love for his two daughters, The Christmas Box is now a national bestseller and a must-have for every home.

Christmas Oranges by Linda Bethers and illustrated by Ben Sowards

The only home little Rose has ever known is the orphanage where Mrs. Hartley cares for all the children as if they were her own. When tragedy occurs Rose is sent to a new orphanage, which is as cold and cruel as her previous home was kind.

Gradually Rose makes a few friends, and she learns that every Christmas a generous neighbor donates a box of oranges for the children. But on Christmas morning, Rose is brokenhearted when she learns that there is no orange for her. However, Christmas is a time of friendship, love, and miracles...

A tale of discovery and hope, perfect to share with children as you tuck them in on Christmas Eve. (Or, if you’re like our associate editor, you like to eat it while savoring a chocolate orange…)

Snow Angels by Angel Randall and illustrated by Brandon Dorman

Best friends Angel and Krystal discover the secret of the snow angels. With that secret, they find many ways to joyously make a difference in the lives of others. Krystal and Angel show children and adults alike that we're never really alone when we're serving others—angels are closer than we might think.

An opportunity to teach young children about the gift of service to others during the holiday season, this story warms your heart.

And, of course, you should always read the true Christmas story found in the scriptures. Check out our article on Advent for a more in-depth list of scriptures to study this holiday season to focus more on Christ.

Your turn: What's your favorite Christmas story? Did we miss any that you would add to the list?

{A&E} Ultimate Guide: Finding Clean Books

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:04:00 -0600

by Kaela Worthen
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: After running our article on sites for reviewing movie content a month ago, we received several requests for an article to screen books as well. Your wish is our command.

I’ll tell you a secret. I almost failed 8th grade because I read too many books. True story. That’s how much I love reading.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the world of literature is larger and more diverse than that of its cinematic counterpart. This means everyone can find something to appease their varying appetites for the written word. It also means sites to review books vary in the number and genre of books evaluated.

The other problem is the manner of evaluation—let’s face it, The Book of Mormon could easily be rated R in movie format. All the war chapters that comprise the majority of Alma, the grisly end of Shiz at the conclusion of Ether, the graphic despotism of Moroni 9? And let’s not get into all the icky sins of Sodom and Gomorrah and all the other such gems we find in the Bible. The lines aren’t quite as easily drawn when assessing the worthiness of literature, and everyone has their own standards for evaluation.

With those caveats, here are some sites that can help you out on your quest for the best of books. Some of them are personal blogs of people who do book reviews, and many of them include traditional book reviews that just happen to also touch on content or only feature books that are already “clean” (according to their personal definition), so feel free to check them out to see which one (or ones) fits your needs best.

Book review sites:

commonsensemedia.org

focusonthefamily.com

theliteratemother.org

goodcleanreads.blogspot.com

ratedreads.com

novelbookratings.com

readcleanbooks.blogspot.com

To check out our article on movie review sites, click here.

Your turn: How do you decide which books to read and which to ditch? Do you have your own book review site or one you use all the time that we haven't featured here?

—
Kaela Worthen is the associate editor at LDS Living. A self-titled “ultimate grammar nerd,” she also battles serious addictions to news and food websites and a compulsion to dance to the radio while driving.

New Orson Scott Card book 'Laddertop' written with daughter

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:54:00 -0600

source: deseretnews.com

In his new graphic novel "Laddertop, Volume 1," author Orson Scott Card teams up with his daughter, Emily Janice Card, to explore one of his common themes — extraordinary children who are placed in extraordinary circumstances.

The result is a compelling first volume of a science fiction series that will appeal strongly to young adult readers — specifically young women, since the protagonists of the book are two 11-year-old girls.

Nominations open Whitney Awards for LDS authors

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:37:00 -0600

source: deseretnews.com

Nominations are now open for the 2011 Whitney Awards for the best fiction published by an LDS writer in 2011 regardless of publisher or market.

The Whitney Awards are named for early Mormon apostle Orson F. Whitney, who gave an inspirational speech that prophesied that one day we would have “Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” Previous recipients include such bestselling authors as Orson Scott Card, Gerald Lund, Kerry Blair, Dean Hughes, Dave Wolverton, Jamie Ford, Brandon Sanderson and many others.

Discovering Jane

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:19:00 -0600

source: segullah.org/blog/

Mormon Life says: Isn't it great when a good book can change the way you see the world? The best part about this is that when the author discovered Jane Austen, her books were still relatively unpopular. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was 5 months into my first pregnancy, a semi-newlywed and carrying a full load of classes, among them English literature. This particular semester I was enjoying my discovery of a somewhat obscure authoress by the name of…….wait for it…….Jane Austen. Yes, this was 22 years ago, at that time Jane Austen for the most part was relegated to the realm of English lit classes, high school honors classes and dedicated Anglophiles. I had spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon on the living room floor reading Pride and Prejudice – perhaps you’ve heard of it. I hadn’t. And this from an English major. Really. The moment that is so cemented in my memory was when Mr. Darcy told Elizabeth that he loved her and wanted to marry her. If someone would have told me that the sky was orange and that black was white I would have been more likely to believe it. After picking my chin up off the floor and re-reading the words to make sure that I understood correctly what had been said, I had to put the book down, just to recover from the shock.

{A&E} Dallin H. Oaks: "What do you want to be remembered for?"

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:32:00 -0600

by Kaela Worthen
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: In his most recent book, Life's Lessons Learned, Elder Dallin H. Oaks shares the most valuable lessons he's learned and encourages us to consider the same.

What do you want to be remembered for?

While serving as president of Brigham Young University, Dallin H. Oaks was asked this very question. Though it was asked in connection with his position, he applied it to all areas of his life.

“I asked myself, ‘When your children grow up and leave home, or when you die, what do you want them to remember about you as a father?’ This question caused me to see that I was in danger of being remembered for always being critical and nagging about trivial behaviors that irritated me, such as the practice of a teenage daughter who continually scattered her clothes and other possessions all around the house. I wanted to be remembered for fatherly communications of praise and love and other matters of eternal importance.”

In his most recent book, Life’s Lessons Learned (click here to learn more), Elder Oaks shares personal experiences from his life and concludes each brief chapter with a principle he gleaned from them. With 37 lessons learned that we can apply in all our lives, I think the book is a definite treasure.

But even if you don’t get a chance to read all of them, you can start applying this lesson today by asking yourself:

“What would I like to be remembered for when I am released from your present position [whether it be my Church calling, occupation, role as parent, or time on earth]?”

I'd love to read any thoughts you'd like to share in the comments below.

Kaela Worthen is the associate editor at LDS Living. A self-titled “ultimate grammar nerd,” she also battles serious addictions to news and food websites and a compulsion to dance to the radio while driving.

{A&E} Sister Elaine Dalton: Just As Amazing in Person

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:01:00 -0600

by Ashley Jones
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: I've had the pleasure of working with Sister Elaine Dalton for the past few weeks while she promotes her new book, A Return to Virtue. These are my impressions of her after getting to spend time with her. Sister Elaine Dalton, general Young Women president, recently published a book entitled A Return to Virtue. I'm working as her publicist right now and am thrilled to get to interact with her on a somewhat regular basis.

Last week, she had an interview with Deseret News, one of the larger newspapers here in Utah. I met the reporter at Sister Dalton's office and the two of us were greeted by Sister Dalton, dressed in her staple color: soft yellow. We walked into her office in the Relief Society Building on Temple Square. The office was the epitome of Sister Dalton: clean, classy, warm, and light. Again, her staple color was found all throughout the room, with little hints of light blue here and there. It was absolutely beautiful.

The photographer took a couple of pictures of Sister Dalton, then the reporter, Christine Rappleye, started with her questions. I sat quietly and watched Sister Dalton as she answered the questions—what an incredibly dignified, poised woman. She's the type of person who leaves you feeling warm and so good about yourself after she's been speaking with you. If she has the light of Christ in her, what it would be like to be around the Savior?

Two amazing things I noticed about Sister Dalton during my interactions:

1. The last few times I've seen Sister Dalton, she has been wearing a long gold chain with a few small pendants hanging off. I haven't been able to pick out what the other small things are on there, but the one that stood out the most was the Young Women medallion, proudly displayed. Some find it embarrassing or childish to wear the Young Women medallion—not her. There is absolutely no doubt that she loves the young women of the world. She sees exactly who they are and who they can and will be.

2. In a few different places in her office, Sister Dalton has the following scripture either framed or sitting on a shelf: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Phillippians 4:13). She lives that scripture. She knows she can do anything He asks of her, because He will be there helping her. Same goes for you and me.

My job sometimes gets really stressful and incredibly overwhelming, but then there are days like this when I get to rub shoulders with incredible people who teach me lessons I would have never learned anywhere else.

Elaine S. Dalton is the author of A Return to Virtue. Click here to learn more.

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Ashley Jones practices public relations for Deseret Book. She loves writing and home-made popcorn, and is a Pinterest-aholic.