Glyde had a great Fourth of July sale this month. They’ve been having more specials, sales, and contests lately. If you sign up for the mailing list or follow them @Glyde on Twitter, you will hear about those things immediately. An example of one of their contests a while back was on Twitter. They asked followers to vote for their favorite logo out of a few choices. Everyone who voted got $5 added to their account to use on anything. $5 might not seem like very much, but that covers the cost of most books listed on Glyde as well as some of the S&H. My books are still listed for sale in my Glyde Collection. Most of them are $3.00 or less. I’m hoping to run a contest here in the near future so one of you can win a gift certificate to use on Glyde. Today you can use the coupon code “DICE” at Glyde.com. The coupon is random. It could be $1 and other times $6. Their Facebook page has more info.

Do any of my readers sell Usborne Books? Somehow I ended up on a Usborne mailing list. I check them out and delete them generally, but the most recent newsletters sent out had some interesting information in them. First, you can enter a drawing to win a free copy of Noisy Zoo. Also, from the person whose mailing list I’m on (Tracey), is a chance to win $50 worth of books. That form is here. For those who aren’t familiar, Usborne is one of a few Avon-like booksellers. They put out their own books and individuals can start a home business by selling them. They also allow people to host Book Fairs to earn books and incentives for their school, do fundraisers, and chariable contributions linked with Literacy for a Lifetime.

The main reason I wanted to bring up Usborne is the links from their newsletter. They linked to a website called Reading Rockets. “Reading Rockets is an educational initiative of WETA, the flagship public television and radio station in the nation’s capital, and is funded by a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.” The website is FULL of very useful literacy information. There are tabs for parents, educators, librarians, etc. One of the links was to this this article about Summer Loss, which is the information children lose over vacation. Without year-round schooling, parents and kids are responsible for staying on track through summer vacation. According to this article, a study by Johns Hopkins shows that lower income families had a much harder time keeping their children from losing knowledge and skills throughout the summer. I found it interesting…and preventable. Reading Rockets helps by providing free reading guides and helpful information for parents of struggling readers on their website.

Saving the most important thing for last. On June 29th Last Journey: A Father and Son in Wartime hit bookstore shelves. Staff Sergeant Darrell “Skip” Griffin, Jr. was working on a book while deployed in Iraq. He wanted to put his experiences down on the page, make sense of them and describe them in the way that CNN doesn’t. His father, Darrell Griffin, Sr., was going to help him finish writing it when he returned home. On March 21, 2007, during his second tour of duty in Iraq, “Griff” was killed. Two years later, Last Journey is available in bookstores. SSG Griffin was a friend of my husband’s. We pre-ordered the book some time ago and he is working on reading it. I can say that reading the book has been a journey in itself for my husband. When I finish reading it myself, I will publish a review here. Check out some of the reviews on the website if you’d like to know more right now. If you’d like to read more about SSG Griffin, Stryker Brigade News has some great links. This article by Alex Kingsbury of US News & World Report is particularly great. I’d be interested to see what Kingsbury has to say about this book.