Children get excited. When my two-year-old, raised thus far in squirrel-less Taiwan, first saw one of the lavishly-tailed critters in our American backyard, he shrieked at the top of his lungs and convulsed with joy. When my kids find a gecko or toad, they concentrate their full energy on creating its very own home, playground,…
A few years ago my husband and I started collecting storybooks to introduce the classic tales to our kids. As we searched and read, we found a strange disconnect between the stories we remembered and what was being published. In one version of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, it turns out that the troll who…
I am pregnant with our fourth child. Our five-year-old daughter all but demanded, upon threat of secession, a baby sister instead of a third brother. But the grainy ultrasound revealed our coming son, miniaturely and precisely detailed, wiggling arms and legs at the very joy of having them. Within me, God is sculpting a delicate…
We were gathered around our dinner table with friends and a home-cooked feast, and the conversation turned to reading. My friend mentioned that in the past twenty years he has read, at most, three fiction books—out of hundreds of nonfiction books. “With so many things to learn in the world, I don’t have time for…
My husband and I sat together watching a sweet movie where a relationship was unfolding between a young girl, an aspiring story-teller, and her new neighbor, an older disillusioned novelist. She asked him to teach her about imagination, and maybe her earnestness inspired him, because he had a small creative spark left. He told her…
