This week, check out Children’s Lit Book Group for recommendations of two excellent picture books — for older readers :

“Sometimes a child’s sense of wonder can refresh my own. While I can get annoyed with the constant echo of “did you know?” and the “Mom, look at this!” I try to remind myself that for Nick, at ten, there’s still a lot of the world that’s new and unknown, that he has a lot to learn, and that I should be grateful when he shares it, even if it’s not new to me.”

In Doing It Differently, a lovely tribute to her mother:

“When I read a book I think my mother would like, I sometimes find myself making a mental note to tell her about it. My mother was what she herself would call a real people person. Everyone she met confided in her. A man behind her in line at the grocery store would tell her of his son’s drinking problem. A young waitress would slip into her booth at a coffee shop and share her sadness about a recent miscarriage. She was a good listener and a terrible gossip. She loved human drama.”

And finally, read Violeta Garcia-Mendoza’s review of the new poetry collection by Julia Lisella, Terrain:

“Becoming a mother has awakened a profound hunger for narration in me. I seek the connection, the promise of life, and the epiphanies that reading about the experiences of others offer me. Now that I am tethered so intimately to another human life, I open more fully to the lives of others. I feel initiated into a network of witnesses — the women who know the terrain of motherhood.”

All of this, plus more poetry, short stories, essays and columns, every week at LiteraryMama.