by Mary E. Cronin | Apr 7, 2016 | Cape Cod, Community connections, Middle-grade fiction, We Need Diverse Books
I had the privilege of watching author James Howe present to Nauset Regional Middle School today– the whole school. (I have an inside advantage: my wife Bonnie is a guidance counselor there!) He spoke at two different schools today, and will give an evening...
by Mary E. Cronin | Mar 29, 2016 | Cape Cod, Community connections, Middle-grade fiction, Poetry, Teaching, We Need Diverse Books
Raising a Reader! I’m offering this community education class in May 2016 at the Cape Cod Campus of Bridgewater State University. Raising a Reader is a non-credit course aimed at parents and caregivers who want to infuse a love of reading and books into their...
by Mary E. Cronin | Mar 25, 2016 | Middle-grade fiction
“You can’t survive if you only see the darkness, if you cannot laugh and love and if you don’t have hope in your heart.” ~author Sarah Moore Fitzgerald When I was asked to review an Irish middle-grade novel for the Project Mayhem...
by Mary E. Cronin | Feb 3, 2016 | Cape Cod, Community connections, LGBTQ+, Middle-grade fiction, Tomfoolery
May the road rise to meet you, and the wind be always at your back. ~Irish Proverb Tomfoolery. It’s a word I love, and the title of the middle-grade novel that I’m revising and preparing to send back to my agent, Linda Camacho. Tomfoolery just received a...
by Mary E. Cronin | Nov 3, 2015 | LGBTQ+, Middle-grade fiction, We Need Diverse Books
I was shaken recently when a friend relayed a story from a school in my liberal state of Massachusetts: an 8th grader received an anonymous note at school, to the effect of “Faggot- hope you kill yourself.” In my writer world, I admit I get lulled into a...
by Mary E. Cronin | Jul 7, 2015 | LGBTQ+, Middle-grade fiction, Tomfoolery, Uncategorized, We Need Diverse Books
As a teacher on summer hiatus, I’m grabbing all of the free hours I can muster, running as far and fast as I can with my middle-grade novel-in-progress, Tomfoolery. And the other day, the stars aligned to tell me, “Yes! Keep going. You are moving in the...