On Friday, April 27th, Randall Goodgame and the Slugs & Bugs team are releasing Sing the Bible With Slugs & Bugs 3! If you’ve heard Slugs & Bugs and Lullabies, Slugs & Bugs Under Where?, Sing the Bible With Slugs & Bugs, Sing the Bible with Slugs & Bugs 2, or Sing the Bible Family…
Friday April 27 – Saturday April 28 Story Warren co-founder S. D. Smith is delighted to be speaking at Your Imagination Redeemed Conference in Colorado Springs, CO. From the conference website: When you read a book that stirs your spirit and captures your imagination, what is it in that tale the makes you feel awakened and alive?…
What is imagination good for? And why do we need imaginative stories? The real world is full of beauty. Normal lives are full of drama. And beneath it all is Truth; bright, hard, sharp as the point of a spear. So why make stuff up? Why read (or play at) things that aren’t real? Because…
The Riot and the Dance Part I: Earth is a film described by its creators as, “A boisterous new nature documentary featuring a biologist who was once told he would never succeed if he kept blabbing about all that silly Creator-creature nonsense.” I got to watch an early screening with my family, and we found…
Our own S. D. Smith is running a Kickstarter campaign to finance publication of the third book in his Green Ember series, Ember Rising! I’ve read the manuscript. Ember Rising is everything the next book in this series should be – Fresh and compelling while staying entirely grounded in the characters, places, and themes of…
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 summer, my wife and I took a once-in-a-lifetime vacation to a place of extraordinary beauty. I’m not a naturally observant person; I easily get adrift inside my own head, and I feared I would return with fuzzy, tunnel-vision memories of our trip. To avoid this, I set myself some guidelines for using my camera,…
It is the business of a sinful world to turn our eyes away from Jesus – to the more pressing, familiar-seeming things around us: “a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past” (Lewis, The Screwtape Letters). Our work, entertainment, and hobbies act as anesthetics. And like anesthetics, they block pain…
If I had to make a list of “Story Warren Values,” somewhere on that list would be the idea that nurturing imaginations is NOT a job only for professionals and experts, but comes best from parents who share their own imaginations and loves with their children. I recently had a discussion with Sara Ernst, who…
I was young when I first read A.A. Milne’s books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. So young, in fact, that I didn’t notice his playful capitalization, giving proper names to Very Important Things. I also failed to notice any family resemblance between elephants and heffalumps, or between haycorns and acorns. Fortunately, I was…
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…
The inimitable ND Wilson has just released another novel, Outlaws of Time #2: The Song of Glory and Ghost, and we’ll have a review for you on Friday! In the meantime, this seems like a good place to share an interview Wilson did with the good folks over at Apologia Radio. Watch for some thought-provoking…
