I have often written about the atmosphere of reading, how the presence of books in the home, parents who read, and reading aloud to children makes reading a way of life for them, so I don’t know why I am chagrined by my grown children commenting, when some offhand remark about audio books occurs, “The…
Tell me, dear Story Warren readers, does browsing through the children’s section of your local bookstore leave you slightly depressed? It certainly causes me to feel a little down. So many titles seem overly educational, age-inappropriate, or focused on imparting some Big Socially Conscious Message. By the end of a spin through Barnes & Noble…
I started writing songs about family life when my kids were tiny. The first songs were lullabies and odes to diaper changes. Then came Slugs & Bugs and songs about lost pajamas, ninjas, and swinging on the swing set. Now, at 14, 12 and almost 8, the content has morphed again. When our oldest (Livi)…
I don’t know about your kids, but as soon as their birthdays arrive, or Christmas rolls around, or their grandparents send them spending money, my children forget about all the multitudes of delightful toys that are scattered around their room. The stuffed animals piled on their beds, the cars and princesses crammed in their toy…
One activity I enjoy every spring is tracking down the list of Newbery and Caldecott Medal winners (usually announced in January or February) at my library. This year I snagged two of the Newbery winners before they got long waiting lists, and was surprised to find that they were both novels in verse. Poem-novels are…
I was honored to be the guest on a recent episode of my favorite podcast, The Read-Aloud Revival with Sarah Mackenzie. We are big fans. (And Sarah has been a huge champion for The Green Ember.) We talked about stories, Story Warren, new book(s) news, and a lot more fun stuff. “We do need to…
The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here! Around the Web: Blurred Vision Suzi Kallam writes at the Church at Charlotte blog of…
My wife Gina wrote a short review of The King of Little Things and you can read that here. We love the book as a family and have snuggled up many times in our cozy home in West Virginia to read it. So imagine our surprise when we learned later that Bil Lepp, the author,…
The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here! We had a big week at Story Warren. The week began with our own S.D….
The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here! Around the Web: Walking in the Ordinary Nate shares about the power of the ordinary…
In their book, Bless This House: Prayers For Families And Children, Gregory and Suzanne Wolfe write about how “mornings seem to be the special province of young children”, about how it’s hard for parents to keep up with the incredible energies of a child freshly awake. Bethany and I know this first hand. Coulter has more…
Inkwell is back, and we’re so excited to share this day of unbottling imagination with you. Again and again at our first Inkwell last year, we heard parents and kids saying, “Please, please come back next year!” And we felt the same way. We can’t wait for our second annual Story Warren Family Conference. Inkwell…
