The Year at Maple Hill Farm by Alice and Martin Provensen - with particular attention to March

Title: The Year at Maple Farm
Authors: Alice and Martin Provensen
Publication: Atheneum, hardcover, 1978
Genre: Picture book

Description: This book chronicles a year on a farm, starting in January during the cold, grey days of winter, through spring and rebirth, the sense of change in the fall air, to the end of the year in December.

Withering-by-Sea and Wormwood Mire by Judith Rossell

Title: Withering-by-Sea and Wormwood Mire
Author and Illustrator: Judith Rossell
Publication: Atheneum, hardcovers, 2016 and 2017
Genre: Middle grade historical fantasy

Plot: In Withering-by-Sea, we meet Stella Montgomery, an eleven-year-old orphan being brought up by three disagreeable aunts and their spiteful maid Ada in the Hotel Majestic, somewhere in Victorian England. Stella longs for adventure but the closest she has come is reading about the Amazon in the Atlas she cherishes. When a desperate visitor to the hotel gives her something to hide, Stella is plunged into danger, forcing her to flee from a magician who wants to harm her. In the process, Stella makes friends (courageous Gert, part of a dancing act, and Ben, the unwilling assistant to Professor Starke) and starts seeking the truth about her own background.

What was your favorite book as a child?

The New York Times asked today what was *your* favorite book when you were a child and it is interesting to see all the comments. Many mentioned favorites of mine such as The Phantom Tollbooth, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, Narnia, The Lord of the Rings but I was also interested to see an early comment listed the Malory Towers and St. Clare's books of Enid Blyton, which very much influenced my early (and lasting) love of English school stories. Many of the books I loved as a child were books that were already published so I tried to remember books that my sister and I eagerly anticipated coming out in the same way we now await HP VII tomorrow night.