Happy New Year 2015

 Wishing Everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Nancy (written and drawn by Ernie Bushmiller
December 31, 1943

New Year day is a day when we are standing on the cusp between 2014 and 2015 -  it's a good time to look back over the past year and forward to the new year.

I realized recently that I haven't been as attentive to The Children's War as I had been in the past.  I actually considered ending it last summer, but decided I wasn't done with it yet.  I still have lots more books, Sunday Funnies, Weekend Cooking, movies, songs and other popular culture items that I want to do posts on.

And, as I wrote on my other blog, Randomly Reading, I also realized that I am a terribly Reading Challengee.  Sure, I like Reading Challenges, but I keep forgetting to list the books that I read for them.  For example, of the 15 books I pledged to read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, I only have 12 listed.  Really?  On a blog that is all about history?  Sadly, yes.

What to do?

This year, I am cutting back on Reading Challenges.  Last year, I participated in four.  Of those, I read 2 books for my Crusin' Thru the Cozies challenge.  As I said, I read 12 out of 15 for the 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, and I read 7 books for my 2014 European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader, 2 more than I pledged.  And finally, for my 2014 War Challenge with a Twist, hosted by War Through the Generations, I read and posted about 3 out of 5 books, though I am still reading my Vietnam entry, so I hope they keep the Linky open a little longer for latecomers like me.

The only reading challenge I will be participating in will be the 2015 War Through the Generations Reading Challenge in which you can read about any war.

Of course, participation in other reading challenges is still subject to change.

I completely indexed all my posts in 2014, and I'm not too bad about keeping them updated, but hope to be better in 2015.  It is my wish that these will be of some use to teachers, home schoolers and others with an interest in WWII.  I know my focus is mostly on home front books and how the war impacted young people, although I do occasionally look at other types of books.

2014 was the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I.  I read and posted some wonderful books about WWI, and felt that since it is so directly related to the causes of WWII, I would keep posting about it for a while longer.

2014 saw an interesting happening in the way we read literature for young people.  As I wrote on Randomly Reading, many of us have been introduced to experiences different from our own and we are all the better for it.  Thank you to the late Walter Dean Myers for asking the question Where are the People of Color in Children's Book? in his Opinion essay in the March 15, 2014 New York Times.  Sadly, WDM passed away shortly after this was published, but WOW, what he started…

This is a good time to say thank you to Ellen Oh, Malinda Lo and Aisha Saeed for taking up WDM"S challenge and starting the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign and setting all of us in the children's book
world on our toes and changing the way we think about books for young readers.

I can't wait to see what 2015 will bring.