It’s a life changing choice to build a home library, it can be an exciting challenge to find space to put it, but the decisions about how to organize your books can be the most baffling. Before you begin the labor of stacking, and moving, and shelving and shifting them around, – perhaps many, many… Read More Living With Living Books Part 3: A Place for Books
Dreams and reality can coexist. The dream of providing a home library for your family to enjoy does not need to evaporate because the practical problems of where to put them all seem insurmountable. Following are some of the most common questions or objections I receive and my briefest responses. 1. I don’t have room for books. I have… Read More Living With Living Books Part 2: A Space for Books
What a family values is readily apparent as soon as you step into their home. How it is arranged, the order or disorder, the style and quality of its content reveal in part, just as the outward appearance of an individual reveals something of their personality, but the evidence of what a family does with its time is most… Read More Living With Living Books Part 1: A Case for Books
Suspecting many of you share this mother’s concerns, I have decided to quote her letter in full here: Dear Liz and Emily, “I want to first say how much I appreciate your blog and your vision (I’d like to call it a ministry!). My 10 year old daughter is the only reader child in our house… Read More There is a Time for Reading
Casey Over There by Staton Rabin This picture book chronicles the wait of a young boy at home in Brooklyn whose brother is sent “over there” to fight in The War. Through correspondence and harmonic events in the two brothers lives, readers glimpse the feelings of family waiting for their brothers, sons and fathers to… Read More Top Picks: World War One
I know you’ve been gone from this earth nearly forty years and some will think it silly of me to write to you now, but I am pretty sure that you would not. I am writing to share how much your stories have meant to me, and will continue to, and also to disagree with your self-mocking remark: “I… Read More Dear Kate,
Virginia Kahl’s Picture Books Many of this author/illustrator’s stories feature “A long time ago there lived over the waters a Duchess, a Duke and their family of daughters.” Though they have 13 daughters, don’t neglect reading these to your boys too. Not only will they love the medieval knights, castles and feudal life, they will… Read More Top Picks: Middle Ages Historical Fiction
One of the workshops I attended at the just concluded Childlight USA Conference in Boiling Springs, North Carolina was on writing. The presenter discussed how children learn to write and why they write, which gives us insight into guiding them in their writing education. The main contributing ingredient to those who excel in the craft is a rich background and… Read More The Girl Who Loved Storytelling
Little Britches (and others in the series) by Ralph Moody When the family moves to Colorado in hopes of a curative effect on his father’s health, Ralph learns that he must step up to help the family survive. Through the first few books Ralph’s character is honed, and by the end of the series we… Read More Top Picks: Dealing with Adversity
“I always thought that libraries were repositories of all the best in literature that had ever been written,” my friend Michelle Miller shared, “but then I started noticing that a lot of the good old books just weren’t there anymore.” She began doing a little detective work about their mysterious disappearance. Before disclosing her findings,… Read More So Where Have All the Good Books Gone?