Author: michardillo
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Book Review: Mayhem at the Museum by Hannah Bruckner
Thank you to NetGalley and NorthSouth Books for the ARC of Mayhem at the Museum (September, 2025), a soon-to-be published children’s picture book. This delightfully illustrated picture book is the story of young Yuri who is terrified of birds. Okay, that’s fine. The story goes on, however, that Yuri is at a museum observing a…
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Book Review: Little Alleluias by Mary Oliver
Reading Mary Oliver is sort of like feeling your heart pounding in your throat, threatening to break at any moment. I feel sadness at the very beauty of her words, and then I feel mad because I can’t replicate that same beauty with my own. I am trying very hard to be a writer. I…
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Book Review: Buzz! Boom! Bang! By Benjamin Gottwald
This delightful children’s picture book has no words, just beautiful and colorful illustrations. It is a master class in the literary device onomatopoeia. If I were still teaching middle school language arts, I would bring this book into my 7th and 8th grade literature classroom and have students sit in small groups to “read” it…
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Book Review: The Great Gatsby
This “Cook the Book” edition (Chronicle Books) is a republishing of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, complete with a set of 15 recipes at the end of the book, recipes of the food and drink mentioned throughout the novel. This edition is beautifully done, with an authentic Art Deco feel to it thanks…
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Book Review: Overdue by Stephanie Perkins
When perusing available titles in NetGalley, the beginning of the description of this one really jumped out at me: Ingrid Dahl, a cheerful twenty-nine-year-old librarian in the cozy mountain town of Ridgetop, North Carolina… The description finishes with “Overdue is a beautiful, slow-burn romance full of lust and longing about new beginnings and finding your way.”…
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Fr. Basil Westendick, former pastor of St. Patrick’s in my hometown
https://dannwoellertthefoodetymologist.wordpress.com/2017/08/14/franciscan-food-in-cincinnati/
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Book Review: Through an Open Window by Pamela Terry
First, thank you to NetGalley and Pamela Terry, through her publisher Penguin Random House, for the ARC of this new novel, to be published on August 19, 2025. This is Pamela Terry’s third novel, and I feel that her work becomes stronger and stronger with each new book. She is a true Southerner, and her…
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Book Review: The Confession of St. Patrick
Every year I resolve to read more spiritual texts and every year I fail. This year, once again I resolved to do so and God gave me a helping hand. Last Thursday, after morning Mass, I ran into our parochial vicar outside the church. He mentioned that he was working on a research paper as…
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Friends, Family, Food, But No Funeral!
My husband and I just recently returned home from a nine-day trip to our home state, Louisiana, where we had the time of our lives. This trip was planned around my nephew’s engagement party, bookended by family time and some really great food. When my husband and I married, we were both living in Maryland,…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 