I know I joke that if food fails in my house, my kids can just eat the books, but there is a sense in which I am dead serious. Books are nutrition for the soul. There is a hunger as critical to life as the physical need for food. The Bible says, “As a man…
Do you have crazy local commercials where you live? You know the ones — the type that come on Saturday morning and clumsily implore you to BUY BUY BUY whatever it is they’re selling over the airwaves. We have a car dealership here in North Carolina that uses a dog in all their commercials. The…
Editor’s Note: This article by Zach Franzen, his first on StoryWarren.com, was posted four summers ago and remains one of my favorite (and SD Smith’s most-quoted) articles, by anyone. I recently read an article urging Christians to be more countercultural. By countercultural I think the author meant that Christians ought to get arrested more often…
There’s an old story about the blues musician Robert Johnson, whose mastery of the electric guitar – it was said – came about as a result as a secret meeting at the crossroads with the devil himself. Every time I read Jack Prelutsky’s poetry, I have the same feeling – this guy must have made…
I’m not exactly proud of this, but I think it’s time I finally copped to it: I got my six-year-old addicted to video games. Ironically enough, I was six myself when I got my first real taste of electronic entertainment. The original King’s Quest made my Apple IIe’s floppy drive shudder as though suffering from…
She had to learn how to twirl a baton and she had to learn fast, because if she learned how to twirl a baton, then she stood a good chance of becoming Little Miss Central Florida Tire. And if she became Little Miss Central Florida Tire, her father would see her picture in the paper…
I have a new second favorite children’s book. As I’ve shared here at Story Warren, The Napping House by Audrey Wood is my absolute favorite (http://www.storywarren.com/playing-favorites-the-napping-house/). But there’s now another children’s book that is coming in a close second. It’s a book by Mo Willems, an imaginative retelling of a classic tale. His version is…
Every time I read Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, I cry. “Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.” The story is simple, heartbreaking, potent. On every page, I see the love of God contrasted with my fickleness, my wandering. I see the early days of our relationship, those first sweet meetings,…
The craziest things can happen when you have an undying affection for books. But, let me back up. I’m sure that affection grew from the stories poured into my ears as a little one, and definitely was given full “scope for the imagination” (as Anne Shirley of Green Gables would say) by my visits to…
I’ve been a parent for twenty-two years. My husband and I are different parents today than we were two decades ago. Our older kids got the better end of deal in a number of ways. Bad Manners at Dinner Night, memorable (although not always for the best reasons) camping trips, and a well-documented childhood via…
I like to keep an eye on some “Caldecott award watch” websites, and when I saw one mention a book called Ideas Are All Around, by Philip C. Stead, it caught my attention as one that the Story Warren crowd might be interested in. This whimsical picture book is a simple story; the narrator goes…
Why do you love stories? (I know. There are too many reasons to count.) For me, one good reason is food, of course. And dragons. But one constant throughout all the great stories I’ve heard – and hopefully told – is that they feel truthful. Deep down, there’s a thread running through all of them…
