About Us

Thank you for visiting our site. This is a space devoted to celebrating timeless narratives written for the young-at-heart. This website is a gathering of bibliophiles and book-hunters who are ageless enough to declare that magic, enchantment, and castles-in-the-air exist … if you know where to find ‘em. Through our passion for the written word, we wish to develop a collection of our favorite picture books for children (and grown-ups too!) and young adult (YA) literature – and share this with fellow book-lovers, inspired teachers, and enthusiastic parents who are aware of the power of narrative and story-telling in shaping and moulding young minds.

As we are all certifiable drones who need to earn a living during the daytime lost in the system of surviving, our team of three – spread out across three countries (Singapore, Philippines, San Diego USA) – would attempt as much as we can to write about books that “spoke” to us in one way or another. We hope to slowly build a resource that would be meaningful to fellow book-hunters, parents, and teachers who are continually on the look-out for sites such as these to tear their little tykes away from tivo, psp, and network gaming (just to cite a few).

Team Background

While our team has diverse backgrounds and interests (Clinical Psychologist/Teacher Educator, a Graduate Student in Developmental Psychology, and a US Nurse) – we are all bibliophiles at heart and voracious readers who feed our soul with moving tales, subtle imagery, and sparkling witticisms. We are constantly on the look-out for like-minded individuals who can lead us to obscure authors who can transform a simple sentence to an otherworldly experience.

Myra Garces-Bacsal (Contact: myra.bacsal@gatheringbooks.org)

I am a Teacher Educator (specializing in gifted education) and a Clinical Psychologist by profession. My heart is in connecting with gifted children and high ability learners (and their families and friends and pets and plants too, if you may) who are looking for kindred spirits. For months now, my teacher-students have been asking me for referrals of possible books that they could feature in their classrooms or use for discussion. Thus, the idea of developing this kind of resource blossomed. And with the help of our IT-and-Blogger Expert Mary Daradar, this new home of Gathering Books is born. Over and above that, I am a celebrified geek who has a deep yearning for good books and celebrates narratives that heal the soul and move one’s sensibilities. I believe that books have the power to change one’s life and allow one to escape in an alternative plane of existence where storytellers, magicians, and witty sharp-tongued children rule the universe. To know more about my involvement in GatheringBooks, click here.

Interests:
postmodern picture books, bibliotherapy, poetry, coffee, live performances, loud laughter, gothic dark and surreal narratives, academic discourse (ugh), and fairy tales

Favorite Music:
Joni Mitchell, Ingrid Michaelson, Jane Siberry, Cynthia Alexander, Jill Sobule, Gregory and the Hawk, indie female acoustic singer-songwriters speak to me

Favorite Movies:
The Blind Side, City of God, Slumdog Millionaire, Bridge to Terabithia

Favorite Books:
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Falling Angels by Colin Thompson, Last Alchemist by Colin Thompson, Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials, Clive Barker’s Abarat, Barker’s Weaveworld, Isabel Allende’s Stories of Eva Luna (and many more)

Mary Daradar (otherwise published as gatheringbooks – mary.daradar@gatheringbooks.org)

I’m currently a Marketing Group Head for a consulting firm, as well as a Developmental Psychology Graduate student with a concentration on Human Development Intervention. I’m  an active blogger for corporate and theme-driven blogs. I’m also the ‘technical’ person of the team.

Interested in books that entertain, challenge my view of the world and explores ideas of mortality and the paranormal. Believes that there’s a perfect time for a book. Not all novels can be appreciated at any age, some require the grace of maturity and experience. To know more about my involvement in GatheringBooks, click here.

Interests:

Psychology, research, poetry, coffee, graphic design, reading, writing, business ideas, marketing ideas, traveling, Japanese literature (and possibly culture), food (eating it, baking it, cooking it, and serving it.)

Favorite Movies:
Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Dead Poets Society, Jane Austen related flicks, Comic-turn-Movie Flicks, Juno, Stranger than Fiction, Love Actually, Sherlock Holmes, Inception, Magnolia

Favorite Books:
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Consolation of Philosophy, Dance Dance Dance (or anything by Haruki Murakami), Pride and Prejudice (or anything by Jane Austen), Sherlock Holmes, Books by F.Sionil Jose, Books by Ambet Ocampo, Poetry by Emily Dickinson and Pablo Neruda, By the River Piedra, How to be Good, High Fidelity, A Long Way Down, Graveyard Book, Surviving the Applewhites, LOTR, Chronicles of Narnia, and More.

Fats Suela (fats.suela@gatheringbooks.org)

I am a Gemini. Witty. Playful. Sardonic. And, at times, cynical.

Click here to know more about Fats’ involvement in GatheringBooks.

Favorite Movies:
Amelie, Blood Diamond, The Boondock Saints, Braveheart, Catch Me If You Can, Ciudad de Deus, The Dark Knight, The Holiday, Howl’s Moving Castle, How to Train Your Dragon, Il Postino, Inglourious Basterds, The Kite Runner, Lars and the Real Girl, The Lord of the Rings, Love Actually, Memento, Monsters Inc., My Girl, Paris Je Taime, Ponyo, Pulp Fiction, Lola Rennt, Slumdog Millionnaire, Spirited Away, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Zoolander

Favorite Books:
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), Of Love and Other Demons (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis), The Solitaire Mystery (Jostein Gaarder), Veronika Decides to Die (Paulo Coelho), By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (Paulo Coelho), The Missing Piece (Shel Silverstein), From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg), The View from Saturday (E.L. Konigsburg), Stargirl (Jerry Spinelli), Artemis Fowl series (Eoin Colfer)

Other Members of the GatheringBooks Family

Prof Libby G Cohen* (libby.cohen@gatheringbooks.org) is a visiting scholar. She is passionate about improving the lives of children, youth, and adults with disabilities and is especially interested in teaching methodologies, universal design in education, and using technology to facilitate teaching and learning. She was awarded the title of “Professor Emerita” by the University of Southern Maine in the United States.

She is the author of grants that have funded a number of technology projects that facilitate the participation of children and youth with disabilities in science. She has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, US Department of Education, Mitsubishi Electric Foundation and others. She also has served on the editorial boards of three respected journals.

* (from the ECSE website – Early Childhood and Special Needs Education, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Prankis Tuazon (prankis@gatheringbooks.org) is our Resident Geek and Hopeless Romantic and the Magical Creator of our email addresses and other IT stuff (the jargon escapes me for the time being).

Interests: Computers, computers and computers. Oh did I tell you I love computers? Piano and Violin.

Favorite Movies: Matrix, Gattaca, A Walk to Remember, City of Angels, Bedazzled

Favorite Books: Gift of Acabar, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Review Policy

We do accept books/e-books for reviews (email gatheringbooks2009@gmail.com or any of the team members above to contact us). While we can not promise that we would find your book as delightful as you perceive it to be, we shall be profuse with our praise and kind in our constructive notes. We do promise that your book will have its space in our Featured Book section.

Our goal is not so much to critique but rather to provide support to local/international authors (regardless of how well-known or obscure you happen to be) and to link up with like-minded individuals who share our passions/interests. Think of us as virtual cheerleaders – with the spectacles and piles of books in front of us instead of pompoms and pigtails- what an incongruous image, but that’s what we looove.

More importantly, we encourage children and teenagers to submit their comments/insights/recommendations about books that moved them to laughter, made them cry against their will, or simply entertained them. Please check out Quill Junior for guidelines to submit your work.

Thank you for being a part of GatheringBooks! Read (rock) on!

- Myra Garces-Bacsal, PhD