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“SWAG: Southern Women Aging Gracefully” Are you a SWAG? Do you feel the urge to bake a pound cake after reading an obituary? Have you monogrammed your shower curtain? If you are still uncertain as to your SWAG status, Melinda Rainey Thompson explains it in her new book. Thompson chronicles the everyday etiquette and eccentricities of a woman’s life in the South, and celebrates Southern food and motherhood. Topics include swimsuit shopping, squirrel battling, magnolia theft, cemetery etiquette and surviving a family reunion. Published by John F. Blair in Winston-Salem. Softcover, 256 pages, $14.95. (800) 222-9796 |
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“The Bridge Crew” Set in a time before television, video games and computers, this story recounts a group of kids growing up in a Blue Ridge village. The kids were named The Bridge Crew because they met on a pedestrian walkway under a canopy of huge sycamore trees. Their activities included antics such as building huge spider webs and oiling the tracks before “The Virginia Creeper” left the Warrensville depot. Sam Shumate, who lives in Warrenville, is the author. “The Bridge Crew: Growing Up in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1940s and 50s” is published by Parkway Publishers in Boone but available through John F. Blair in Winston-Salem. Softcover, 158 pages, $19.95. (800) 222-9796 |
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Raising Happy Children “The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children” is a new, updated and expanded version of the book by family psychologist and columnist John Rosemond. Rosemond, who works in Gastonia, encourages parents to return to fundamental techniques, and believes in reminding parents that they are their children’s leaders, not friends. Divided into six chapters, the plan outlines issues of child-rearing, such as self-esteem, discipline, chores and television. Published by Andrews McMeel Publishing in Kansas City, Mo. Hardcover, 308 pages, $24.95. The book is sold or can be ordered at chain and independent booksellers, as well as some online book retailers. |
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“The Christmas Bus” Set at the Peaceful Valley Orphanage, this holiday story tells of Mrs. Frump and her rowdy kids. Mrs. Frump decides to find holiday homes for her orphans. Trouble ensues, however, when the local busybodies and suspicious Sheriff Snodgrass intervene, and a simple bus ride turns into a harum-scarum adventure. Book by Robert Inman, who lives in Charlotte and Boone. Illustrated by Lyle Baskin, who lives in western N.C. Published by John F. Blair in Winston-Salem. Hardcover, 84 pages, $19.95. (800) 222-9796 |
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“Battleship North Carolina” This second edition expands well beyond the original 1982 publication. New features include officer and crew stories, a section devoted to explaining daily life at sea, a foldout map of the ship’s Pacific Ocean operations, additional details on the ship’s design and wartime operations and more photographs, charts and illustrations. The author, Capt. Ben W. Blee, USN, is one of the ship’s World War II intelligence officers and twice chairman of the USS North Carolina Battleship Commission. Published by Battleship North Carolina in Wilmington. Softcover, $19.95, 172 pages. (910) 251-5797 |
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“Growing Up Jim Crow” In the segregated South, unwritten rules of everyday behavior governed how individuals stood, sat, drank, walked, talked and made eye contact. In “Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Children Learned Race,” author Jennifer Ritterhouse explores the ways in which children learned about race, in terms of the racial roles they were expected to play in public and in their sense of themselves as being of a particular race. Ritterhouse analyzes adults’ prescriptive writings about children and reviews children’s literature and reports of children in segregated settings. Through these methods, as well as autobiography and oral history, she shows how kids realized the “etiquette” of race relations and sheds new light on questions of change and continuity in the South. Softcover, 320 pages, $19.95. Published by The University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill. (800) 848-6224 |