Hello friend. Another year has blasted by! I hope your holiday season was filled with love and family, friends and memories to cherish in the future. 

Remembering

Has your year been filled with success? Failure? Joy? Sadness? Laughter? Tears?

If your life looks anything like mine, it was a mix of good and bad. My personality is to take life as it comes and then move on to the next day. I don’t take much time to look back. It’s honestly hard for me to remember something that happened weeks or months earlier. That’s one reason why looking back at the end of the year is helpful and good.

At the end of last year, I took a class called Children’s Book Pro, which taught all about illustrating children’s books. Through this class I met some new friends who have been in a weekly critique group with me all this past year. It’s been a wonderful motivator and amazing for accountability to continuing my writing/illustration journey.

I’ve also had a lot of life that happened, as I’m sure you have. I got a call to come pick up a newborn baby from NICU to foster. A brand-new tiny baby was a surprise for our family. I also had another foster child later in the year, and another adjustment to our family dynamic and our lives.

Could I have accomplished more writing and illustrating if we hadn’t fostered these children? Sure. I don’t regret the choice of loving these kids though. It’s something God had been pressing on my heart for years, and we dove in this year to become a foster family.

I have a quote for all you goal-oriented,

So whatever you have on your plan for the year ahead, take a breath and know that you have enough time, you have enough talent, and you are enough. You can do what you are supposed to do. It might not be what is expected, but it is perfect for you.

Books I’m Reading and Recommending:

Middle Grade:

The Silver Chair
by C.S. Lewis

The kids and I are still making our way through the Chronicles of Narnia. They love them, and I enjoy them, too.

Eustace and Jill escape from the bullies at school through a strange door in the wall, which, for once, is unlocked. It leads to the open moor…or does it? Once again Aslan has a task for the children, and Narnia needs them. Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, they pursue the quest that brings them face to face with the evil Witch. She must be defeated if Prince Rillian is to be saved.

YA:

Heir to the Empire 

by Timonthy Zahn

I am starting the year out reading an old favorite from the past. I still love it, and I still stand by this Star Wars timeline over the mess of the latest trilogy.

It’s five years after “Return Of The Jedi”: the Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and driven out the remnants of the old Imperial Starlfleet to a distant corner of the galaxy. Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting Jedi Twins. And Luke Skywalker has become the first in a long-awaited line of Jedi Knights. But thousand of light-years away, the last of the emperor’s warlords has taken command of the shattered Imperial Fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the new Republic. For this dark warrior has made two vital discoveries that could destroy everything the courageous men and women of the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to build. The explosive confrontation that results is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale — in short, a story worthy of the name “Star Wars.”

Picture Book:

The Hat 

by Jan Brett

I love Jan Brett’s books, and this one is especially good.

When Lisa hangs her woolen clothes in the sun to air them out for winter, the hedgehog, to the amusement of the other animals, ends up wearing a stocking on his head.

Until next time,

Charlotte J. Glaze