The hidden-picture nature of this engaging middle-grade novel accounts for some portion of its appeal: Can you spot the echoes of Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Lewis Carroll, and J.K. Rowling? (Not to mention a host of others with whom I’m likely unacquainted. Literary influences cited by the author alerted me to The Wonderful…
Have you ever read a story that made you look up from the page at the world around you to see it with a renewed sense of wonder? That little patch of woods out back—or the bus stop down the street—suddenly harbors a new magic that lends itself to the imagination. Your eyes scan the…
Our theology influences every part of our lives, and yet so many theology resources are fairly abstract—they’re hard to decipher, and tough for kids to decode. We adults can leap a little more nimbly from one abstract concept to another, so applying theology—what we believe about God—to a dicey situation at work may come more…
NOTE: TOMORROW, January 25, 2022 Jonathan Rogers is returning to Narnia for the next installment of his “Writing with…” series of online classes. In Writing on The Dawn Treader, Jonathan will walk writers through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, examining the specific tools and methods by which C.S. Lewis achieves his particular kind of magic. Then, in…
Sterling North’s Rascal is a gem I re-discovered by reading to my kids. It is a story supposedly about a raccoon, but really about North’s boyhood growing up in Wisconsin during World War I — the war that affected everything yet, compared to the decades that followed, changed so little of essential American life. He…
Children believe in the impossible. Stories with heroes who face hardship, setbacks, and even defeat win their instant sympathy and when those heroes overcome, succeed and rise to fame and fortune, the child, who has been the hero’s fan from the start, is strengthened in the conviction that anything can happen if you try. I…
It rained for days. Not the drizzly, misty rain we’re known for in the Pacific Northwest, but fat, cold, splashy drops that fell and fell and fell. We could hear them, hammering the roof. We could see them, coursing down the windows. We watched the backyard spring puddles like leaks in places there had never…
That first week of September, I dropped all four of my children off at school and drove home in an empty minivan. Ordinarily, an empty minivan is a treat: a chance to put on a podcast or some music I want to listen to, or to stop for coffee and not share with anyone. But…
We live in a world blighted by sin. This past year, we’ve seen startling markers of it: the day I first drove downtown last spring and saw the shops closed and the streets empty, I felt it. This is not how it was meant to be. But even on a day like that, when everything felt marred…
Teaching kids to pray can be tricky. When we talk to other people, we take in all kinds of cues, from their posture to their facial expression to what they do with their hands. They interact with us as we speak, even if they respond only with a distracted “Mmm-hmm.” But the act of prayer…
As Christmas approaches with all the excitement and preparation, I also try to turn my children’s hearts and minds toward the celebration of Christ’s birth, the miracle of his coming and the anticipation of his return. Many years ago when my children were babies I was fortunate enough to come across the idea of a…
When I was in high school, I was hungry: I wanted a substantial meal. I wanted something true and lasting, and I looked for it everywhere. But all the books I read told me that this was it—the world around me, with its petty conflicts and scalding pain, was all there was. These books told me…
