Once In A Blue Moon
by Molly Levite Griffis
New Forums Press, Stillwater, OK
ISBN 158107158-2
129 pages
Hardcover $19.95, paper $14.95

Quantity pricing for classrooms and workshops

For middle school readers, Once in a Blue Moon tells the story of a 10-year old boy and his grandfather, a judge, who develops early-onset Alzheimer's.

About the Book

“In a pig’s eye!” Joe Watson’s best friend Paul responds when Joe finally breaks down and confesses he is afraid something is going haywire in his beloved grandfather’s brain.

In a pig’s eye and going haywire are two of the dozens of funny country sayings Judge Benjamin Franklin Bennington, Joe’s grandfather, has taught the boys over the years. Old saws, the judge called them, because they cut straight to the truth without going around Robin Hood’s barn, which of course means going the long away around. “Old saws hold the truth like a cup holds water, and the truth will always out,” he tells Joe and Jim Paul often.

And Joe and Jim Paul, certified George Washington School Truth Tellers, believe him...until the judge begins to forget the words as well as the wisdom of his old saws. Then the truth begins to unravel like a sweater caught on barbwire, and the boys discover that the lies they tell themselves are the hardest lies of all to swallow.