“I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do,” G.K. Chesterton wrote. “The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud.” This is no mere materialism or naturalism. Ian Boyd […]
The Holy Longing of Happily Ever After
Some time ago, after I was given a collection of Grimm’s fairy tales, I asked my 8-year-old niece if she wanted to read one with me. Lilly said no, she doesn’t like fairy tales: “They have the worst endings. ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ Stories shouldn’t end that way because that’s not what […]
Jack the Giant-Hugger
I tell my son, who is conveniently named Jack, two different versions of that classic story, Jack the Giant-Killer. The first is known to most of us as Jack and the Beanstalk, and it follows the traditional storyline: a tumbledown shack, a cow, some magic beans, a beanstalk, fee-fi-fo-fumming, bravery and derring-do, and, at the […]
Review: A Year in the Big Old Garden
My love of stories with characters who are animals probably started with Beatrix Potter and Winnie-the-Pooh when I was too young to remember. As I got older I found Brian Jacques’s Redwall series and Watership Down and The Book of the Dun Cow and S.D. Smith’s Green Ember series and others. Towering above all these […]
Review: The Last Archer
If I were to tell a young person about The Last Archer by S.D. Smith, I’d probably say something like this: It’s the story of an archer named Jo Shanks who wants to earn his place among a group of elite bowmen (bowrabbits? bowbucks?) from Halfwind Citadel. He goes through various trials and battles in […]