About this item
“Be careful,” said Matilda. “Do not buy a pig in a poke.” “What’s a poke?” asked Darwin.Yes, what is a poke? And why would Waltur, a bear, buy a pig, anyway?Together with the help of his best friends, Matilda and Darwin, Waltur is about to find out the wisdom of Matilda’s words. Through trial and error, he will also learn the truths behind two other funny old sayings: “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch” (why not?) and “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” (wanna bet?).
About the Author
Barbara is excited about her first YA novel, The F Words, to be published by City of Light Publishing on September 1, 2021. Because his father is in Cook County Jail for organizing a neighborhood demonstration, Cole Renner tags his high school wall with the f word. And is caught doing so by his English teacher, who requires Cole to write two poems a week, each starting with an f word. While visiting his father in jail, running on his school's cross-country team, helping his best friend Felipe Ramirez run for class president, and relating to the new girl anarchist - and writing those poems, too! - Cole learns how to fight for social and political justice.From an early age Barbara Gregorich determined to be either a baseball player or a writer. She never thought her either-or belief would lead her to write She's on First, a novel about the first woman to play in the major leagues. Nor did she think that from fiction she would migrate to fact and write the award-winning Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball.Even though she loved detective fiction from an early age, Barbara never aspired to be a private eye. Instead, she wrote Dirty Proof and Sound Proof, novels featuring Chicago private eye Frank Dragovic. Sound Proof takes place at a folk music festival full of theft, blackmail, and murder, and has received many five-star reviews on Amazon. Readers particularly enjoy the setting (as well as the mystery) , and Barbara, whose husband plays the hammered dulcimer, enjoyed attending music festivals while plotting the novel.Having read thousands of mystery novels over the years, and having formed strong opinions on what works and what doesn't, Barbara published Guide to Writing the Mystery Novel: Lots of Examples, Plus Dead Bodies in 2014. And in 2018 she published a book she had long wanted to write, a biography of Earl Derr Biggers, who was a critical figure in the Golden Age of American mysteries, the 1920s. That book is Charlie Chan's Poppa: Earl Derr Biggers.When she isn't writing, Barbara is either watching baseball games, weaving baskets, or living the life of a roadie, helping her husband, Phil Passen, travel to various gigs. And, like Cole Renner of The F Words, she fights for justice through political demonstrations.
