A couple years ago, I read an op-ed in the paper where the author bemoaned how toy manufacturers always marketed their products as “educational.” Nowadays, it seems as if every dolly and digger needs some sort of salubrious rationale before a kid can play with it. What’s the problem with simply having fun? the author…
As you can probably guess by now, I really enjoy stories where everything doesn’t end well, where a hard fall illustrates difficult truths, and where there’s a dearth of sunshine and kittens. I enjoy tales of winter not only because they appear in the literary canon, but also because they turn up in Scripture. And…
Note: This review contains numerous spoilers. To read more about tales of winter, check out my original Story Warren post here, as well as my review of Jonny Duddle’s The Pirate Cruncher. Any honest plot summary of John Christopher’s young adult The Sword of the Spirits trilogy will have most conscientious Christian parents squirming in…
Note: To read more about tales of winter, check out my original Story Warren post here. What child doesn’t love pirates? During my youth in south Florida, I used to wander the beach with parents, picking over driftwood, chasing sandpipers and looking for Skull Rock. No mere mental homage to J.M. Barrie, Skull Rock was…
I like fiction. While many here wouldn’t find that confession controversial, the good Christian folk among whom I grew up would lift an eyebrow at it. Why? Well, first they’d always say, “Can’t you see you’re wasting your time with things that aren’t real?” I’m sure readers of Story Warren can see problems in that…
How I loved pre-child Saturdays! After five days working in the office, I found it almost ambrosial to sleep in late, enjoy a leisurely breakfast and share long conversations with my wife. “Enjoy it while you can,” my old college roommate told me not long after he had his second kid. “That stuff all goes…
How little I knew about life before I had children! For example, I didn’t know that babies can develop an oral yeast infection called thrush. (Until that point, a thrush was something that twittered outside your window when you were trying to snooze on Saturday mornings. A Saturday snooze—ah, the memories.) I didn’t know you…
