Books with author Barbara Smith

Mama believed the woman who dies with the most fabric scraps wins. She saved scraps from odd sewing job for neighbors. She saved buttons from old winter coats and birthday dresses. Mama had a button from Daddy's first uniform and another from Grandma's cloth coat and every button in the box came with a story. In her trademark Texas twang, award-winning storyteller Barbara McBride-Smith recounts stories from her family that speak to all of us.

When she was a young girl, Barbara McBride-Smith was introduced to the ancient Greek myths but she didn't quite hear right. When her teacher told her they lived in the cradle of western civilization, young Barbara thought she said Western civilization - as in central Texas, around about Waco, where they seemed to fit right in. Ol' Man Zeus, after all, was a gun-totin' Big Daddy, sort of the J.R. Ewing of Mount Olympus. You know Aphrodite, the school basketball queen or Pandora the debutante, the best guitar picker around was Orpheus - Tom T. and wasn't Medusa the one who started the fashion trend known as Big Hair? With her incurable Texas drawl, feminist sympathies, and cheerleader's do-right attitude, master storyteller Barbara McBride-Smith spins the Greek myths as you've never heard them before.

The year is 1949 in a small country village back in the mountains of West Virginia. Callie, a twelve-year-old girl lives with her family on a farm. They live off the main highway on a one-lane dirt road winding through the countryside. Teepee type haystacks fill the fields with beauty exploding along the way. Her family performs farm chores for a living. Her parents are Christians raising their children in the same manner. Callie is leafing through a catalog one day and spots a pair of white satin ballerina slippers, immediately falls in love with them, and decides she wants to become a ballet dancer. From that moment forward Callie lives in an imaginary state of becoming a dancer. One morning on a trek to her one-room schoolhouse Callie encounters a dangerous situation and tries to protect herself, returning home extremely ill. What causes Callie's illness? Will she ever get to dance in her magical white satin ballerina slippers?

It is the summer of 1912 and the family reunion at Greg's Napa, California Estate is well underway. Evangeline's "New Moon" ceremony to dedicate the refurbished Drunemeton is not progressing to her satisfaction so uncharacteristically, she turns it over to family members that are present in California. As they meet to discuss this matter and "center and listen" (a family traditional meditation circle) they all see the grand old sacred oak tree hit by lightening. Great precautions are taken to protect the tree with lightning rods. The tree, it turns out is not the target of the lightning, but an ancient stone with runes written on it. The destruction of this stone sends shock waves through the magnetic ley lines of Northern Hemisphere causing a progression of events to occur all the way to ruins of an ancient nemeton at the site of the biblical city of Galatia. Join the Grenels and associates in their adventure of discovery and growth.

Historical fiction: Go along with ten-year-old George as he visits his sea captain grandfather on Mount Desert island, Maine in 1908. Even with his tendency to exaggerate he couldn't have imagined what amazing stories and adventures he would find, and what he would discover about himself. An engaging chapter book enjoyed by young listeners or independent readers - and grownups too.

The bestselling, "excellent…poignant―and scientifically lucid―portrait" (New York Times Book Review) of the remarkable Marie Curie.Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over sixty years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the myth―an all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is a dazzling portrait of Curie, her amazing scientific success, and the price she paid for fame. 15 photographs