If you’re anything like me, it’s not uncertainty about the importance of truth and beauty that brings you to blogs like Story Warren. It’s that artful parenting is hard, and lonely, and sometimes feels like merely adding to an already impossible list of parenting demands. If you’re like me, you need to be reminded that…
It’s a truism that caring for children takes a lot of work. I once heard someone say that we can best describe that work as hospitality. We feed them, we provide clean towels, fresh soap, laundry service, complimentary transportation, and many other gestures of hospitality, in hopes that they will feel welcome and wanted. We…
Today I am extraordinary pleased to announce that Moody Press has released a book destined to capture the imaginations and liberate the hearts of children in a way that will surpass nearly all the other books printed in this decade. That’s a bold claim, I know. And it’s not the sort of thing I would…
My wife loves plants. I love beautiful places that encourage a restful heart. The result is that I have learned to love gardening and the general niftyness of the plant world. Caring for plants can also open our eyes to larger truths. For example: After thinking over the relationships I’ve been blessed with, I’ve concluded…
After reading Laura Peterson’s glowing review of The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, I found this video introduction by the great Malcom Guite to be entirely delightful. I hope you do, too!
I believe that one of the most precious things we can give our children is a sense of belonging. Christians rightly make much of not belonging to this fallen world, but Scripture does not say we are a nomadic, homeless people. No, we are strangers in a strange land, but we are pilgrims – we…
As a boy, I loved stories by Thornton Burgess, A. A. Milne, and Beatrix Potter. I think they helped me to discover the adventure, the personality, and the dignity in the natural world around me. Since the release of my first book, A Year in the Big Old Garden, I’ve been honored and delighted to…
I have often heard that stories affect us more like experience than fact, working their way down into our unconscious beliefs. This held true in my childhood reading, and Bill Peet’s picturebook, Cowardly Clyde, is a great example of how. Allow me first a quick outline of the story, why I still love it, then a few…
This month my friend S. D. Smith published the capstone book of his best-selling Green Ember series, Ember’s End. It’s a series about anthropomorphic rabbits, villainous wolves, and birds of prey. It’s also a series about what happens when everything you know is broken by an invading evil; the powers of faithfulness and hope and…
SW: This is a big Spring for you, and—without exaggerating—for thousands of kids and families around the world. That’s because you’re releasing the fourth and final book in your Green Ember series: Ember’s End. Are the cliff-hangers over? Will we finally get all our questions answered? SD: I am thrilled to be sharing this story with…
I’m pretty sure everyone has the urge to improve the world. Some feel it vaguely, as a desire to build or accomplish something, but it’s always there. You can see the impulse running pure in children; they love the process of making, no matter how messy the result. As people get older, we begin to…
Thanksgiving is a great holiday. Not only is it specifically devoted to the virtue of gratitude over consumption, but it even offers us a way past the too-abstract notion of “being thankful,” by means of a story. Yes, I mean the story of the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth. It’s a complex story, with plenty…
