Because of A Book with Maureen Hume

Write For A Reader is very pleased to welcome Maureen Hume to the blog today.

I am the author of ‘The Pizza Gang: Facing The Witch’, a crazy, fun, adventure chapter story for children ages 8-12. Visit The Pizza Gang and myself at http://www.thepizzagang.com/
Besides being a children’s fiction author I am the devoted mother to six abandoned, disabled bunnies, friend and aunt to a fantastic extended family full of children and wife to one of the nicest men on this fabulous earth of ours.

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Sometimes I think I was born with a book firmly clasped in my chubby baby hands because books are such a big part of my life and the profound comfort they give me I can only put down to a genetic predisposition.
I grew up on a sheep farm in Tasmania, Australia during the 60’s and 70’s and for a young child it was a blissful existence. We didn’t have a television or even a telephone but what we did have was books, books and more books.
Money was scarce so the books I read were either very old, second hand or end of year Sunday School presentations.
‘The Case of the Missing Toff’ was a favorite not because of it’s content but more because to me it smelled like long forgotten treasure, kind of musty and damp, and the spine creaked spookily with each turn of a page. I never did quite understand what a Toff is or was but the book itself is still stuck in my mind several decades later.
As a shy loner child I completely immersed myself in books and the characters became my trusted friends, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five was actually Famous Six but seeing this wasn’t going to work as a title I graciously asked to be left in the background, included in every adventure, but never mentioned.
And then there was my beloved Trixie Belden. My niece has a full set of exactly the same stories that I treasured thirty years ago, with one small difference, the covers are soft and a clever person has given Trixie a very cool millennium makeover.
But there can only be one winner in the category of childhood books that changed my life and that book would have to be Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I was presented with this book by the church as my reward for attending each and every Sunday School class for the entire year. I loathed and despised this story! Unfortunately for me every man and his dog felt obliged to tell me how lucky I was to be given such a classic book therefore making me feel obliged to fib and agree that yes I was indeed lucky and yes it was a great book.
So every birthday and Christmas for the next two years I was bestowed with a Louisa May Alcott book until I had the entire rotten series.
So, what did my childhood books teach me? Life’s too short to read books you don’t enjoy. If the first chapter doesn’t grab at least one of your senses, toss it and find a book that does.
Oh, and all that pent up childhood imagination that lingers into adulthood…channel it into writing children’s books, so growing generations can immerse themselves in your fantasy and get to know your characters so they feel like trusted friends.

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About Little Women:  Follow the adventures of four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, in this lively retelling of a much-loved classic tale. The sisters fall into one scrape after another, as tempers flare, illness strikes and their lives are filled with new experiences and loves.


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About The Pizza Gang Facing the Witch:  When the neighborhood witch is out to get you, you'll do just about anything to avoid her! That's how twin brothers Joe and Ben, along with their best friend Katie, wound up volunteering to sort through the lost property at the police station. When they uncover a beautiful hat sent to a bride-to-be during a war decades ago, they find themselves in the middle of a mystery that needs solving. Determined to re-unite the hat with its owner, Joe, Ben and Katie come up with a plan involving their eccentric friend, Major Pain In The Butt and his turbo-charged wheelchair. But a series of disasters involving the witch, a cardboard cut-out of Brad Pitt, a bottle of nerve-calming sherry, a moldy theatre curtain and the theft of the hat bring a sudden end to the children's quest. Will they ever find the hat's owner?

Buy it at Amazon
Buy it at Powells
Buy it at IndieBound


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