Author, Twyla Sue McConnell, is a retired educator with over 20 years’ experience as a teacher, elementary guidance counselor, and media specialist. During that time, she worked ceaselessly to instill positive self-esteem and self-confidence in her kindergarten, first and second grade students. Mrs. McConnell believes that children need to feel and know they are wonderful, even if someone says hurtful or mean things to them. She wrote My Wonderful Bear and Me: Teaching Children How to Handle Negative Feelings to help children overcome negative feelings and affirm that they are worthy and valuable simply because they have been created! Mrs. McConnell lives in South Florida with her husband and her dog.
From the farms and pastures of the north Georgia mountains, where pine trees grow in the brick red clay, the tradition of storytelling is alive and well. As rustic as a barbed wire fence, as homey as a light in the window, In the Pines is a collection of stories and poems told in the voice of a vanishing people. Funny, poignant, and reminiscent of events and personalities familiar to us all, you will come away feeling that someone in the book reminds you of a person you know. This is not a book about the magnolia and cotillion south, but about the lives of Appalachian people who lived a hardscrabble life at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains. So, take a journey into the lives of the Appalachian people and listen to the characters tell their stories of joys and struggles, and everyday life in the mountains, in the pines.
When Alex's father takes her to their favorite beach she brings a dandelion with her to make a special wish, but upon arrival she sees another little girl who might need the wish much more than she does..
