In the depths of the cold winter, do you pull out your gardening catalogs and plan? Do you brave the brisk winds to head to the mailbox, to pull in colorful seed catalogs? Additionally, do you worry about your gardens, when you travel? Enlist the help of neighbors for watering and caring for your gardens? Try to plan travel around your gardens?

I've got the book for you. It's a perfect antidode for the below zero temperatures, and a beautiful planning guide to a green summer in Paris.

Rowling, Carroll, Riordan, Baum – it’s time to make room up on that shelf of elite writing goodness for another author. Scoot over. It won’t hurt. James Gough, take your place. His new novel, Cloak, is a classic, an eminently readable, interesting, extraordinary book. If you’re like me, you’re already imagining a movie. But I digress.

I just can't wait any more. I HAVE to share this with you! Last month, I read THE best YA book I've ever read. The book, Cloak, is about enchants, travel, the magic of life, eating (Spam, or bugs, or...), friends, growing, learning, BEING.

I've got an extraordinary project to share with you today. Books of Hope is a program where schools in the U.S. can work to create books for their sister school in Uganda. There's nothing like a book to change a life - and Books of Hope is changing many, many lives.