Would you like to hear your children spontaneously quoting stanzas of poetry? (Real, meter-and-rhyme verses about real things?) I know I do! And when certain poems become a part of your family experience, quoting snippets at each other can be like an affirmation of love. What surprises me into gratitude is how easily – not […]

There are so many reasons to recommend, C.S. Lewis: Letters to Children, a book both my (then) 8 year old daughter and I enjoyed immensely. Here are a few, in no particular order. 1. In all the letters, he treats the children he is writing to with great dignity and respect. This will not surprise […]

Everything about The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine is odd. It’s odd that the two authors, Mark Twain and Philip Stead, never met and in fact are separated by some seventy years. It’s odd that the oddly-named title character doesn’t appear until the last third of the book. The structure is odd—the chapters bounce back and […]

Oliver Jeffers is a favorite author/illustrator in our household. The ridiculous adventures that his characters find themselves in make us laugh while stretching our imaginations. At the top of our Oliver Jeffers list is the picture book, Stuck. Stuck begins with a boy named Floyd who gets his kite stuck in a tree. The rest […]