[Image by Brook Burling.] My boys and I are spending a year with Emily Dickinson. We read poetry every day together, and she stashed away enough in her boxes under her bed to give us plenty to discover during the coming year. Nothing gets you acquainted with a poet like reading their verses for months […]

If you’re looking to start reading poetry regularly in your family, Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses is an excellent place to begin. You may be surprised at how some of the poems are already familiar to you! The following poem is one of our favorites from the collection, and it comes first […]

Have you ever noticed that it is only when the family is in a hurry that the lost shoe phenomenon occurs? How one cannot be in the vicinity of its mate is a mystery. Especially when summer comes and the shoes are despised, they are found in any number of remarkable places. The Outdoors calls […]

Old Roger Ribbit by Gina Sutphin, illustrated by Joe Sutphin Old Roger Ribbit, my ever sweet friend He hops up beside me to give me hand He loves this great earth as much as me too So he shares all his wisdom on what I should do He uses his thistle thorn just like a […]

The mention of “Old Ironsides,” brings a smile to my heart. While on vacation in 2000, our family had quite an afternoon aboard her in Boston Harbor. Later that same year, we adopted a little boy who didn’t speak our language till he was five, but who took every opportunity to crawl into anyone’s lap […]