Toddlers may be the funniest people you’ll ever meet. They know exactly what they want and have no idea what they want. They take everything seriously, and they take nothing seriously. They can go from laughing uncontrollably to crying uncontrollably and back to laughing in an instant. Everything in this world is still new to…
When someone mentions a summer reading list, I think of the year I switched schools. It was before fifth grade, and I had never heard of a summer reading list. I felt the full impact of that terrible list. The books were hard. They were boring. They were long. “But you love reading!” my mother…
Between mouthfuls of oatmeal, my daughter handed me a book. “Can you read this tome?” she said, “It’s my favorite book!” It was Gina Gallagher’s sweet book, Reading withRemmy.Three things I should tell you about our family before I continue: For us, Reading with Remmy brings all of this together. Remmy is a dog who,…
Perhaps one of the most quotable writers of all time, Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s size and body of work are hard to match. His work included about 4,000 essays, 200 short stories, hundreds of poems, eighty books, and five plays. He engaged with many of the intellectuals of his day and continues to shape the readers’…
A Review of The Beastie of Brambly Bald Visits to the library often find my tween daughter strolling the stacks, eager to discoverher next read. She’s unearthed many favorite stories this way. But she’s also uncovered somefinds that I’m uncertain of. I’ve spent lots of time searching the Internet and online groups tohelp my daughter…
On John Hendrix and why you should read all of his books I never know where to begin when reviewing a John Hendrix book. They are consistently among my favorites, and yet, there’s something undefinable about them. When I finish I’m left not so much with thoughts as with a breathless, hand-wavy feeling, something ephemeral…
Second grade science has not been very methodical at my house. Everyday, I hand my son a notebook and tell him to go observe something, draw it, and come talk to me about it. No matter the season, he heads out the door, pencil in hand, compact microscope in pocket, and looks for something amazing….
On picture book biographies and imagining adulthood When our kids were little, I found it hard to imagine them as big kids, let alone teens or—gasp!—adults. But they’re prone to point out things like, oh, that our second-born daughter will be old enough to vote in the next presidential election, or that when our youngest…
I have a new favorite children’s book – it’s one that has been on my mind a lot recently. As I’ve shared here at Story Warren, The Napping House, by Audrey Wood is an absolute favorite (http://www.storywarren.com/playing-favorites-the-napping-house/). And Mo Willems’ imaginative retelling of a classic tale, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs, is also at the…
List-making is practically a hobby with me, and books are a passion, with children’s literature a high-ranking subcategory. Creating lists of the latter is thus a delight accompanied by the danger of disappearing into long, winding passageways papered over by picture books. This is especially true of a topic as fascinating and fruitful as women’s…
If you’ve been around Story Warren for long, you know that poetry is valued and celebrated here. You may have read Liz Cotrill’s article “What’s in a Poem?” or Julie Silander’s “The Serious Play of Poetry – Selected Resources” or Laura Peterson’s “Poems to Learn by Heart.” (If you’ve not read them yet, I commend…
Two years after Catherine Parks delighted our family with her biography anthologies, we’ve hit a dry spell. It seems that for my upper elementary kids, it’s hard to find biography read-alouds that hit the “sweet spot.” Classics like Ann Franke’s Diary of a Young Girl, while deeply worthwhile, are too weighty to delve into piecemeal…
