Sunday Morning Magazine With Rodney Lear

• Loren Long, Illustrator, The Night Before Christmas. Loren Long is the author and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling picture books Otis, Otis and the Tornado, Otis and the Puppy, An Otis Christmas and Otis and the Scarecrow. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator of President Barack Obama’s picture book Of Thee I Sing, the re-illustrated edition of The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, and Mr. Peabody’s Apples by Madonna. Loren's Little Tree, is a picture book for all ages.

Rick Pender is a Cincinnati arts journalist, author, radio interviewer, tour guide and urban resident. He has covered and promoted Cincinnati events and arts for four decades.

Regina Belle’s new single, “Freedom” featuring Iyanla Vanzant, reflects the political and moral climate in this country and abroad. Produced and written by Belle with Chris Walker, her longtime music partner and collaborator, the aptly titled “Freedom” is released on her record label, Tashi III Entertainment. Recorded with a live band, a full choir, and a live spoken-word segments by lifestyle guru Vanzant, and Bishop Kenneth W. Paramore of Christ Centered Church in Akron, Ohio.

Richard Bell served on the DNC National Lawyers Council, the Minority Voting Rights Committee, was an electoral poll monitor for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia in 2012, and an electoral poll monitor for the Clinton campaign in Broward County, Florida during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. He has also argued and won an appeal of a court order protecting voters' rights in New Jersey on Election Day, 2006. Bell has been a frequently called upon legal analyst for the media, including CBS News, CNBC, ABC TV.

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization encouraging informed and active participation in government. It influences public policy through education and advocacy. We never support or oppose any political party or candidate.

Sherry Poland, Director, Board of Elections, Hamilton County Ohio

Currently, Lyra Logan is Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the Florida Education Fund (FEF), a nonprofit that creates and implements educational programs for underrepresented groups. She also directs their pre-college programs, which include after-school and summer coding camps for elementary, middle, and high school students in Florida.

Scott O’Reilly says after a career of prosecuting cases involving child abuse he felt there had to be a better way to provide support, services and resources for abused children. To address this on-going issue, he founded the Little Fork Family Advocacy Center. Mr. O’Reilly explained on-air that the Center will house specialist who can address problems such as domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse, suicide and drug addiction comprehensively.

Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church may be known in popular culture for his sermon at the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle, his life work has been to fight for human and equal rights, the respect and recognition immigrants at the border and Indigenous people, and the LGBTQ+ community. Now, his shares stories from his own life with messages of how we can all live the way of love in his book LOVE IS THE WAY: Holding onto Hope in Troubling Times.

7TH Annual Laughter is the Best Medicine, September 25th at Newport Syndicate. St. Jude Laughter is the Best Medicine, presented by Window World Cincinnati, to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% since it opened more than 50 years ago.

Jack Brendamour, Dragonfly Foundation Board Member & Junk King CEO.

Tracy Tutor is a top real estate agent. She is the first and only female cast member on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing LA.

Katie Blackburn (Executive Vice President, Cincinnati Bengals) Sheri Harper (Chief People Officer, Frisch’s Amy B. Spiller (President, Duke Energy Ohio & Kentucky)

Lady J, Spoken Word Artists, Poet and Author of The Trouble with Socks. The Trouble With Socks is a book of poetry, in which relationships are metaphorically related to socks that are mysteriously separated between the wash and the dry cycles. Delving into how life experiences dictated her relationship choices, The Trouble With Socks begins with the innocence and nuance of love and slowly spirals into self-doubt, verbal and physical abuse, then rallies back to introspection and healing.

Back-to-school is more confusing than ever, but lunch doesn’t need to be difficult. As a registered dietitian, Grace Shea is a mom who specializes in working with children. She has nearly ten-years’ experience in coaching parents on quick, easy, nutritious meals that your child will love and at the appropriate ages, can even make for themselves. If you are juggling home-schooling and a job, need the perfect recipe for packing lunch or are suffering from COVID cooking fatigue, Grace can help!

About the book--Sixteen-year-old Camino Rios lives for the summer—especially the first week of June—when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land—like clockwork, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people… Roughly 1,500 miles away, in New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, which is no big deal at first, because a girl who “meets expectations” and never causes trouble doesn’t flinch when she’s summoned. But, when she meets her “Ms. Universe perfect” mother with her hair in rollers waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash, her entire world changes.

About the book--Marin has always been good at navigating these unspoken guidelines. A star student and editor of the school paper, she dreams of getting into Brown University. Marin’s future seems bright—and her young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. Beckett, is always quick to admire her writing and talk books with her. But when “Bex” takes things too far and comes on to Marin, she’s shocked and horrified. Had she somehow led him on? Was it her fault? When Marin works up the courage to tell the administration what happened, no one believes her. She’s forced to face Bex in class every day. Except now, he has an ax to grind. But Marin isn’t about to back down. She uses the school newspaper to fight back and she starts a feminist book club at school. She finds allies—and even romance—in the most unexpected people, like Gray Kendall, who she’d always dismissed as just another lacrosse bro. As things heat up at school and in her personal life, Marin must figure out how to take back the power and write her own ru

About the book--In the small town of Alcolu, South Carolina, in 1944, 12-year-old Ella spends her days fishing and running around with her best friend Henry and cousin Myrna. But life is not always so sunny for Ella, who gets bullied for her light skin tone and whose mother is away pursuing a jazz singer dream in Boston. So Ella is ecstatic when her mother invites her to visit for Christmas. Little does she expect the truths she will discover about her mother, the father she never knew and her family’s most unlikely history. And after a life-changing month, she returns South and is shocked by the news that her schoolmate George has been arrested for the murder of two local white girls. Bittersweet and eye-opening, How High the Moon is a timeless novel about a girl finding herself in a world all but determined to hold her down.

About the book--The title says it all: this fun debut is a comedic take on potty training with a clever message at the end. Two children bring home a pet porcupine, but they can only keep her if she's house-trained! After a whirlwind of increasingly zany approaches, the kids learn that sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to ask nicely. While the "How To" concept is not new in the picture book genre, the porcupine and potty-training mash-up is fresh and funny, and the popularity of these books does not seem to be waning.

David Matthews, Author, Ace of Spades. Growing up as a bi-racial child, who could pass as either African American or white, Matthews says he knows first-hand how Americans can be racist. Matthews admits he slipped in and out of the black and white worlds, never really knowing who or what he was. Having a true identity crisis, Matthews says he swung from virulent white racist to pontificating black militant. As a guest on Sunday Morning Magazine, he revealed how he was treated differently when he was perceived as a black man as opposed to a white man.