Showing results for "Buttons" in Growing Up & Facts of Life

Tugs Esther Button was born to a luckless family. Buttons don’t presume to be singers or dancers. They aren’t athletes or artists, good listeners or model citizens. Until tomboy Tugs befriends the popular Aggie Millhouse, wins a brand-new Brownie camera in the Independence Day raffle, and stumbles into a mystery only she can solve, she looks at her hapless family and sees her own reflection looking back. But it’s a summer of change, and it just may be that in the end, being a Button is precisely what one clumsy, funny, spirited, and observant young heroine decides to make of it.

When a steamboat arrives heralding the news that Iowa has been called up to represent the Union of the United States of America, Ike is beside himself with excitement. For months, the promise of war has enveloped small-town Keokuk like a grand game that everyone's in on - everyone but Ike, his swaybacked pony, and his best friend and checkers partner, Albirdie. Left behind with Mother and the aunts and girl cousins while the Button men march forth toward glory, Ike's fate is sealed.

Tilly dreams of having a pony of her own. One that only she can ride to stardom. Will her wishes come true when she joins Silver Shoe Farm Stables? Oh Buttons, what a naughty pony! He’s disobedient for everyone at Silver Shoe Farm, until he meets Tilly. She has some clever ideas for turning this tricky pony into a happy pony.

Mama believed the woman who dies with the most fabric scraps wins. She saved scraps from odd sewing jobs for neighbors. She saved buttons from old winter coats and birthday dresses. Mama had a button from Daddy's first uniform and another from Grandma's cloth coat, and every button in the box came with a story. In her trademark Texas twang, award-winning storyteller Barbara McBride-Smith recounts stories from her family that speak to all of us.

Latonya’s family wasn’t just a story of growth—it was a legacy of love, passed down through generations like a cherished melody. The ten children, once tiny hands gripping their mother’s fingers, grew into adults who carried the warmth of their upbringing into their own homes. And then, in another beautiful chapter, the grandchildren arrived.