As the wife of a surgeon and the mother of young children, I am well-practiced in answering every mom’s favorite question: When will Daddy be home? I am also well-practiced at getting on with life as we wait, with preparing meals and playing games that Dad may not be home in time to share with…
For those of us reading blogs such as this one, literacy is a sacred trust. Our children grow up reading or being read to, possibly even before birth. Books are treasures, furniture, pastimes, and art. They are purchased in piles, bestowed with abandon, and brought home from the library in stacks. A world without the…
Hey folks, we just wanted to make sure that all fans of S. D. Smith’s Green Ember books have something new to enjoy! S. D. Smith and his son, J. C. Smith, have released a new book called Jack Zulu and the Waylander’s Key. S. D. Smith wrote the The Green Ember Series for his…
Joshua 4:21-24 And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until…
Over the past few years our family has enjoyed The Gospel Coalition’s series of picture books, beginning with Betsy Childs Howard’s Arlo and the Great Big Cover Up and Polly and the Screen Time Overload. With whimsical storytelling and charming illustrations, both books offered kids practical guidance rooted in Scripture in a fresh, engaging way…
When it comes to allegories, people have Opinions. Some readers find them unbearably cheesy, which is, I guess, understandable: few things grate on the nerves like a story that’s too handholdy—the kind that tells us what we’re supposed to think about every element of the story. And allegories can certainly come across as handholdy. There’s…
One of the delights of having all daughters is that it’s starkly clear to me how different they all are. We don’t have to account for gender differences; the ways our daughters differ from one another have a little to do with birth order and everything else to do with who they are. And from…
We jokingly called this past summer The Summer of Life-Skills. It was a make-up summer, one in which I determined to teach my kids a bazillion things they might need to know as adults—practical lessons, like How to Ride the City Bus, or How to Order Your Own Italian Soda. For much of the pandemic,…
Have you noticed the way that Christmas music blurs the line between the sacred and the secular? When December rolls around it is not at all uncommon to hear Bing Crosby crooning classics like “White Christmas” or “I’ll be Home for Christmas” on Christian radio stations, and over on secular stations all kinds of artists…
I really was one of “those moms.” When Carey my oldest daughter was not even two years old, I placed in her little wooden box a few toys, board books such as Moo, Baa, La La La and Goodnight Moon, and… a set of cards of Claude Monet paintings (I don’t remember if they were…
I am a book crier. My first time reading Andrew Peterson’s The Monster in the Hollows, I was pregnant, and ugly crying so hard my husband didn’t know what to do with me (“You.. you okay over there?”). My mom tells the story of me as a five-year-old, finishing Charlotte’s Web for the first time,…
When it comes to allegories, people have Opinions. Some readers find them unbearably cheesy, which is, I guess, understandable: few things grate on the nerves like a story that’s too handholdy—the kind that tells us what we’re supposed to think about every element of the story. And allegories can certainly come across as handholdy. There’s…
