Mother’s Day Kindle Fire Giveaway – $250

Mother’s Day Kindle Fire Giveaway

An awesome group of bloggers and authors have joined with me to bring you one fabulous prize!
One lucky winner will receive…
A Kindle Fire + Amazon Gift Code to fill it will ebooks ($250 Value)
Alternately the winner can choose $250 in Paypal Cash

Thanks for this fabulous group of authors & bloggers who have sponsored this giveaway!

Sponsor List

I Am A Reader Simple Wyrdings Kimber Leigh Wheaton Cynthia Luhrs Author Laurie Here – Cont Fiction and More Heather Boyd, Historical Romance Author Krysten Lindsay Hager author Diana’s Book Reviews Every Free Chance Books FLYLēF Book Reviews Tamara Gill Love. Without You The Page Unbound Glistering Bs Blog Joshua David Bellin A Leisure Moment Toi Thomas Helen Smith Megan Tayte (romance author) My Crazy Bookish Life The Serious Reader Cool Cat Mysteries Barefoot by the Sea inspiredbooksguide Reviews by Martha’s Bookshelf Author Mary Ting Lori’s Reading Corner Beth M. Honeycutt Jennifer Bardsley Heather Gray The Candid Cover Author Dorothy Dreyer

Giveaway Details

Kindle Fire + Amazon Gift Code ($250 value) or $250 in Paypal Cash
Ends 5/7/16

Open only to those who can legally enter, receive and use money sent via Paypal. Winning Entry will be verified prior to prize being awarded. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter and announced here as well as emailed and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Giveaway was organized by Kathy from I Am A Reader and sponsored by the authors, bloggers and publishers on the sponsor list. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Mother's Day Turns 100: Its Surprisingly Dark History

Brian Handwerkfor National Geographic Updated May 8, 2014

Anna Jarvis was the driving force behind the first Mother's

Day observances in 1908.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BETTMANN, CORBIS

As Mother's Day turns 100 this year, it's known mostly as a time for brunches, gifts, cards, and general outpourings of love and appreciation.

But the holiday has more somber roots: It was founded for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace. And when the holiday went commercial, its greatest champion, Anna Jarvis, gave everything to fight it, dying penniless and broken in a sanitarium.

It all started in the 1850s, when West Virginia women's organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis—Anna's mother—held Mother's Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College. The groups also tended wounded soldiers from both sides during the U.S. Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

In the postwar years Jarvis and other women organized Mother's Friendship Day picnics and other events as pacifist strategies to unite former foes. Julia Ward Howe, for one—best known as the composer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"—issued a widely read "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870, calling for women to take an active political role in promoting peace.

Around the same time, Jarvis had initiated a Mother's Friendship Day for Union and Confederate loyalists across her state. But it was her daughter Anna who was most responsible for what we call Mother's Day—and who would spend most of her later life fighting what it had become.

"Mother's Day," Not "Mothers' Day"

Anna Jarvis never had children of her own, but the 1905 death of her own mother inspired her to organize the first Mother's Day observances in 1908.

On May 10 of that year, families gathered at events in Jarvis's hometown of Grafton, West Virginia—at a church now renamed the International Mother's Day Shrine—as well as in Philadelphia, where Jarvis lived at the time, and in several other cities.

Largely through Jarvis's efforts, Mother's Day came to be observed in a growing number of cities and states until U.S. President Woodrow Wilson officially set aside the second Sunday in May in 1914 for the holiday. (See pictures of animal mothers and babies.)

"For Jarvis it was a day where you'd go home to spend time with your mother and thank her for all that she did," West Virginia Wesleyan's Antolini, who wrote "Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Defense of Her Mother's Day" as her Ph.D. dissertation, said in a previous interview.

"It wasn't to celebrate all mothers. It was to celebrate the best mother you've ever known—your mother—as a son or a daughter." That's why Jarvis stressed the singular "Mother's Day," rather than the plural "Mothers' Day," Antolini explained.

But Jarvis's success soon turned to failure, at least in her own eyes.

Storming Mother's Day

Anna Jarvis's idea of an intimate Mother's Day quickly became a commercial gold mine centering on the buying and giving of flowers, candies, and greeting cards—a development that deeply disturbed Jarvis. She set about dedicating herself and her sizable inheritance to returning Mother's Day to its reverent roots. (See National Geographic's pictures of motherly love.)

Jarvis incorporated herself as the Mother's Day International Association and tried to retain some control of the holiday. She organized boycotts, threatened lawsuits, and even attacked First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for using Mother's Day to raise funds for charities.

"In 1923 she crashed a convention of confectioners in Philadelphia," Antolini said.

A similar protest followed two years later. "The American War Mothers, which still exists, used Mother's Day for fund-raising and sold carnations every year," Antolini said. "Anna resented that, so she crashed their 1925 convention in Philadelphia and was actually arrested for disturbing the peace."

Jarvis's fervent attempts to reform Mother's Day continued until at least the early 1940s. In 1948 she died at 84 in Philadelphia's Marshall Square Sanitarium.

"This woman, who died penniless in a sanitarium in a state of dementia, was a woman who could have profited from Mother's Day if she wanted to," Antolini said.

"But she railed against those who did, and it cost her everything, financially and physically."

Mother's Day Gifts Today: Brunch, Bouquets, Bling

Today, of course, Mother's Day continues to roll on as an engine of consumerism.

According to the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend an average of $162.94 on mom this year, down from a survey high of $168.94 last year. Total spending is expected to reach $19.9 billion. The U.S. National Restaurant Association reports that Mother's Day is the year's most popular holiday for dining out.

As for Mother's Day being a hallmark holiday, there's no denying it, strictly speaking.

Hallmark Cards itself, which sold its first Mother's Day cards in the early 1920s, reports that Mother's Day is the number three holiday for card exchange in the United States, behind Christmas and Valentine's Day—another apparent affront to the memory of the mother of Mother's Day.

About 133 million Mother's Day cards are exchanged annually, according to Hallmark. After Christmas, it's the second most popular holiday for giving gifts. (See "Father's Day at 100: How It Began, Why Dad Gets Fewer Gifts.")

Mother's Day Gone Global

The holiday Anna Jarvis launched has spread around much of the world, though it's celebrated with varying enthusiasm, in various ways, and on various days—though more often than not on the second Sunday in May.

In much of the Arab world, Mother's Day is on March 21, which happens to loosely coincide with the start of spring. In Panama the day is celebrated on December 8, when the Catholic Church honors perhaps the most famous of mothers, the Virgin Mary. In Thailand mothers are honored on August 12, the birthday of Queen Sirikit, who has reigned since 1956 and is considered by many to be a mother to all Thais.

Britain's centuries-old Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday of the Christian period of Lent, began as a spring Sunday designated for people to visit their area's main cathedral, or mother church, rather than their local parish.

Mothering Sunday church travel led to family reunions, which in turn led to Britain's version of Mother's Day.

Moms....

The Joy Luck Club Paperback

by Amy Tan

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable."
Forty years later the stories and history continue.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

5 Words That Trace Back to the Word "Mother"

Make Mom proud this Mother's Day—incorporate her in your vocabulary.

1. Alma Mater

From the Latin for “nourishing mother.” Now refers to the school where one has presumably received some mental nourishment.

2. Metropolis

From the Greek combination of meter (mother) and polis (city). A metropolis is a “mother city.”

3. Matter

Materia, from Latin mater, originally referred to a tree’s trunk, the mother of all its branches. It came to stand for wood in general, then extended to building materials, then more generally to stuff out of which something is made, then even more generally to a subject under consideration.

4. Matrix

From Latin mater plus the feminine suffix -trix, this first meant womb but later came to mean any kind of protective, supportive structure.

5. Matrimony

From mater + abstract noun for state. State of motherness.

Happy Mother’s Day Kindle Fire Giveaway (or $229 Amazon Gift Card or Paypal Cash)

I’ve joined together with a great group of bloggers and authors to sponsor this $229 giveaway.  This one has only twitter & facebook options to follow on the rafflecopter so it is quick and easy to enter!

Win a Kindle Fire HDX, Amazon Gift Card or Paypal Cash ($229 value)

The winner will have the option of receiving a 7″ Kindle Fire HDX (US Only – $229 Value)

Or $229 Amazon.com Gift Card (International)

Or $229 in Paypal Cash (International)

Giveaway Sponsors

1. I Am A Reader
2. Feed Your Reader
3. Laurie Here
4. The YA Buzz
5. Book Reviews & Giveaways
6. Buried Under Romance
7. Kelly’s Lucky You
8. CBY Book Club
9. Lena Sledge
10. Unplanned Motherhood
11. Lori’s Reading Corner
12. Author Inger Iversen
13. Making it Happen
14. The (Mis)Adventures of a Twenty-Something year Old Girl
15. AuggieTalk
16. Romance Under Fire
17. Shelf of Imagination
18. Bonnie Blythe’s Pure Romance
19. Christine’s Blog
20. The Reporter and The Girl
21. More Than a Review
22. Laurie Treacy, Author
23. The Loopy Librarian
24. Bella Street Time Travel Romance
25. A Bookish Girl

Giveaway Details

1 winner will receive their choice of an all new Kindle Fire 7″ HDX (US Only – $229 value), $229 Amazon Gift Card or $229 in Paypal Cash (International).
Ends 6/1/14
Open only to those who can legally enter, receive and use an Amazon.com Gift Code or Paypal Cash. Winning Entry will be verified prior to prize being awarded. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter and announced here as well as emailed and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Giveaway was organized by Kathy from I Am A Reader and sponsored by the participating authors & bloggers. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.