Ethelle Gladden: 10 books

Auntie Sunday is the only one we're introduced to, but she's the only one we need to know! She leads her rapt audience (that includes us) in a step-by-step window into life during the seven-year apocalypse. We see through her eyes into a world that fascinates, yet is repulsive—all without...

Charles Dickens’s 'Christmas Carol' has a timeless quality that is as fresh as when it was first written. I've tailored this story to Tracy who, along with her sister and father, are plunged into hard times. Yet, the Christmas magic that changes their luck is "… found in the simile and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or my story’s done for." Merry Christmas!

A Halloween Story takes place in a nameless neighborhood that's fighting hard to hold its own. 10-year-old Linda is followed in equal parts by 8-year-old Street Urchin and timeless, mystical, Grandma Roads. Their kindness to Street Urchin is repaid in a way that gives this story its bitter-sweet...

Mr. Johnson is reading his traditional Christmas Eve story to Bootsie, Lawanda, Latifa, Mrs. Johnson and Baby. He will relate how Christmas is celebrated around the world (or, more particularly, Ghana, Nigeria, China and England). Let him read to you, as you read to yours, and we'll all be children again.

We're sprawled at Grandma Crow's feet on a hot night in Georgia, waiting for her story to send our heads nodding off to sleep to add dream pictures. Tonight's is of a long gone way of life that's turned to dust. Yet, a single dust speck holds a piece of that world. According to...

There’s more life on the beach than people on a hot summer’s day. Once they leave, it’s the Sand People’s turn. The Sand People are a community with structure, laws, and soul. Sandursky is a child of this community. Before we’re through, we'll see him learn to overcome greed, anger and fear, all in one day. FOR EPUB, NOOK, PDF E-READERS.

Flash is 8 and in-the-middle with four brothers who are 6, 7, 9, and 11. He is shorter than all of them and lives in a basketball loving, height worshipping neighborhood, so Flash is desperate to be taller. While he's a whiz at soccer, he doesn't take that sport seriously. However, this changes in a startling way, and Flash learns to accept who he is. FOR EPUB, NOOK, PDF E-READERS

This is about the wish to go back to simpler times, as per 10-year-old Junebug's great-grandmother ("Grandmother"). He loves her tales about the old days handed down from the people who actually lived them (Grandmother is over 100-years-old). Even though she is fading fast, she has something...

Bobby is a little boy of indefinite age--he's old enough to know what's going on, but not why. His heart is broken when his cousin passes on the information that neither of them will be getting new video game systems. However, he has a magic cat (Barbara-Kitty) that helps him to see life's big picture....

We love the fierce, wild, beauty of wolves, and the friendly, loving, servitude of dogs. What opposite personalities. Yet, dogs are descended from wolves. Surely, never the twain shall meet again, no? Well, my story lets us in on a secret gathering of wolves at a "telling." The "wolf-teller"...