Category: the blue bottle

Reading With Kids During Quarantine Promotes Active, Engaged Learning

No matter where you live, you’ve most likely been affected by COVID-19 in some way. Tasked with working remotely while also helping their kids with online school assignments, parents who are quarantined with young children might be in one of the toughest situations. With many U.S. states announcing that schools will be closed for the remainder of the academic year, parents must find activities that will keep their kids entertained and engaged, while also helping them learn. For many, this is proving to be quite a challenge.

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, reading with children interactively on a daily basis can help kids develop important literacy and language skills, while also helping them learn about the world around them. Reading with your kids is also a great way to spend quality time together and create lasting memories.

Several online resources are available to help kids (and parents) get easier access to books during quarantine, including Penguin Random House Audio, LibriVox, Project Gutenberg and International Children’s Digital Library.

For a limited time my middle grade novel, The Blue Bottle, an adventure story for kids age 8 to 13, is available for 50 percent off the cover price.

Stay healthy, and happy reading!

ENP

The Blue Bottle Now Available

I’m happy to announce that “The Blue Bottle” is now available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com as well as on North Country Press’ website. If you have read the book and enjoyed it please consider leaving a review.

Check back soon for live reading dates and times.

The Blue Bottle Now Available for Pre-Order

I’m excited to share that The Blue Bottle is now available for pre-order on North Country Press‘ website. Books are $14.95 and will ship in late September. If you have kids in your life age 7 to 14 who love to read, this book will make a great gift. Reserve your copy today!

The Blue Bottle Cover Reveal and Updated Publication Date

The cover for The Blue Bottle is finished, and it looks great. A big thank you to Lucy Turner of Lucy Turner Art & Illustration, who created the cover image, and to the talented and very nice people at North Country Press for all of their hard work.

The expected publication date for The Blue Bottle has been moved to mid-October. Check back soon for the exact date.

The Blue Bottle Cover Blurbs

This is a quick post to say thank you to my fellow authors and friends who so graciously and generously took the time to read The Blue Bottle manuscript and write blurbs for the book’s cover: Liz Michalski, Tara Masih, Mary M. Slechta and Stephen P. O’Connor. They are all very talented writers and super nice people. I encourage you to visit their author sites and especially to check out their work. You won’t be disappointed.

Here’s a Sneak Preview:

In this enchanting debut novel, Provost captures the haunting beauty of New England lore in a modern tale of a plucky seventh grader discovering her link to the sea folk, and the heart-pounding race to save her town.

— Mary M. Slechta, author of Wreckage on a Watery Moon and The Spoonmaker’s Diamond

The Blue Bottle reminded me of the magic found in my favorite childhood books. It’s a charming story filled with wonder and adventure, a world for readers to get lost in. Grab some lemonade, find a shady spot and prepare to enjoy

— Liz Michalski, author of Evenfall

The Blue Bottle is a book I would have loved to have curled up with as a young reader during summer vacation. It is an absorbing, imaginative novel that captures the historical essence of small-town coastal New England. Well-plotted with surprising touches of engaging magical realism, The Blue Bottle will appeal to both children and their parents.

—Tara Lynn Masih, author of My Real Name Is Hanna, a Skipping Stones Honor Award Book

It’s probably not fair that thirteen-year-old Charlotte Hale is called upon to save Cape Ann, and maybe the world. After all, she’s got plenty of problems of her own. But the evil powers that have arisen out of what many thought was just an old legend should not underestimate her. Charlotte is a keen-eyed, resourceful sleuth with sea-going in her blood. And she never gives up. A beautiful setting, mythical creatures, mystery and danger! What young reader could put The Blue Bottle down?

— Stephen P. O’Connor, author of The Spy in the City of Books, Smokestack Lightning and The Witch at Rivermouth

 

Lucy Turner Art & Illustration

I just got word from Lucy Turner, the artist who has been working on the cover art for The Blue Bottle, that the final illustration is finished, which means we are one step closer to being able to release the book. Check back soon for The Blue Bottle cover reveal.

Lucy is a native of Scotland and a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and Arts University Bournemouth. She lives in Scotland with her family.

Take a look at Lucy’s website and Etsy page. She does beautiful work that evokes a sense of childlike innocence and magic, and at times can feel a bit eerie. She was the perfect artist to illustrate The Blue Bottle‘s cover. I’m so glad I found her and that she was willing to do the piece.

The Blue Bottle to be Published This Summer

I’m excited to announce that my middle-grade novel, The Blue Bottle, will be published sometime this summer by North Country Press. We are currently working on final edits of the manuscript, cover art and a few last-minute details.

The book, an adventure story for readers age 8 to 14, is set in Rocky Harbor, a fictional fishing village on Massachusetts’ Cape Ann. The Blue Bottle tells the story of 13-year-old Charlotte Hale, the granddaughter of an aging lobsterman, who has been sent to stay for the summer with her grandparents after a less-than-successful school year. On the bus ride to Rocky Harbor Charlotte meets an eccentric retired teacher who tells her the story of the blue bottle, a local legend that leads her on a high-stakes quest for an ancient glass bottle reputed to hold within it all the power of the oceans.

Charlotte battles a malevolent sea god posing as an antiques dealer and rotten-smelling eels that can grow legs and walk on land. In the midst of it all, she must come to grips with her divorced parents’ new lives, a painful task that becomes more difficult when she learns of her father’s plans to remarry and her mother’s wish that she and her brother, Charles, live anywhere but with her and her new family.

With the help of her new friend Ezra, a magic mirror, a computer geek named Edward and a 400-year-old mermaid named Eucla who lives in the cove behind her grandparents’ house, Charlotte races against time to find the blue bottle and return it to its rightful owner before the village of Rocky Harbor crashes into the ocean.

Check back soon for the book cover reveal, publication date and pre-order information.