If you are a young boy, or know any, you know that you do not wake up on a Saturday morning with no intentions for the day. This is especially true if you are like Henry and have been concocting schemes to go where no one else has been. You don’t know what you will…
“I absolutely adored The Little White Horse.” J. K. Rowling That sentence alone persuaded me to purchase The Little White Horse, a book I knew nothing else about by an author I’d never heard of. If this story fed the imagination of young J.K. Rowling, I wanted to save our family a seat at the…
“So you might turn the page or you might shut the book, but the truth is still truth even if you don’t look.” – Sarah Sparks, Into the Lantern Waste It is rare to come across an artist who eloquently combines literature with music while both convicting and bringing hope to the listener. Sarah Sparks’s…
Friendship is a tricky thing. Today’s world of social media and texting adds a level to friendships – or rather takes away a level – that has never been experienced before. Throw in a pandemic and the whole idea of how to “do friendship” could make anyone crazy. Recently I finished two books that speak…
How is it that a person becomes convinced of her inherent worth? How does a child sold for a hundred dollars along with a flock of sheep know that she’s worth more than the sheep, more than a hundred dollars? The girl’s name was Isabella, and what the world told her, what people told her,…
“Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children.” Oooo—doesn’t that sentence send a little shiver down your spine? Read it a little slower, maybe in a bit of a British accent. It feels almost like the beginning of a mystery/fantasy epic, in which a brave band of beauty-seekers goes out…
We so often talk about ‘going to heaven’ but the stand out picture for me in the Bible is that heaven comes to earth… or more specifically the new heaven comes to the new earth. And that gets me so excited! It’s embodied, it’s vibrant, it’s free from suffering and packed full of life! I…
We have a lot of picture books to choose from, so when a child of mine insists on the same picture book two days in a row, I take notice. Not that I hadn’t already noticed Scott James’s new book God Cares for Me: Helping Children Trust God When They’re Sick. My husband is a pediatrician,…
Anyone else hankering for a good laugh? Let me see those hands. You know you are – a great, big belly-laugh that is uncontrollable and uncontainable. Laughter has been a commodity that is hard to come by this past year. So many events of 2020 were heavy and difficult to understand, especially for our children….
Over the weeks and months of staying home brought on by Covid, I looked for ways to keep things exciting inside our four walls. One day threatened to blur into another as the seven of us bounced off each other inside the house. Boredom and repetition made us all a little bit crazy. For a…
After a year of living very near to my nearest and dearest, I sometimes feel as if the nuclear unit gets a bit radioactive. My gang gets bogged down by the sameness of COVID life, our family feuds looping like gifs. Parents and caregivers haven’t had the same access to our social networks or supportive…
If your kids are anything like my 8-year old, they may be slightly obsessed the the Hello Ninja series on Netflix. It’s loosely based on N.D. Wilson’s picture book of the same title. And after listening to Wilson discuss it on the Stories Are Soulfood podcast episode about poetry for kids, I was curious to give it a try….
