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!

A quick note: TODAY, June 21st, we’re hosting the Inkwell Conference in Charlotte. We’d love for you to pray with us for the families who will be attending. It’s exciting to do in-real-life what we hope this site accomplish in-the-ether. If you happen to be in the Charlotte area, the conference is sold out, but there is a concert in the evening featuring Randall Goodgame and Andrew Peterson. Can’t wait to tell you all about it!

Around the Web:

Why We Need to Teach Our Children Poetry

Justin Taylor connects with an NYT op-ed about poetry of all things.

Poetry was long ago shoved aside in schools. In colleges it’s often easier to find courses on race or class or gender than on the Augustans or Romantics. In high schools and grade schools, when poetry is taught at all, too often it’s as a shudder of self-expression, without any attempt to look at the difficulties and majesties of verse and the subtleties of meaning that make poetry poetry. No wonder kids don’t like it — it becomes another way to bully them into feeling “compassion” or “tolerance,” part of a curriculum that makes them good citizens but bad readers of poetry.

Great words. Read more.

What Correlates to Productivity in Kids?

There’s some interesting research about productivity and kids coming out:

Surprise, surprise: Kids whose time is less structured are better able to meet their own goals, and the most productive nation, for the fifth year in a row, is Switzerland, where employees enjoy 28 days of federally mandated vacation time. What can we learn from these two news items, especially together?

Interesting data. Read more.

When You’re Tired of Media Voices Telling You What Beauty & Love Is

Ann Voskamp with another challenging reflection on life:

Listen — read the covers of magazines and you’d think romance is a function of cleavage and plastic surgeon noses and spray tans.Read the glossy covers and you’d think love is a function of waist size and heel height and bare flesh flaunted for every gawking eye. Read everything in the check out line and they check you out of reality. That’s what the media is selling: X-rated Beauty. Romance Porn.
That’s the thing about the check-out line: The media’s fuelled by changing the definition of beauty, romance, and love from what is true to what is trendy.

Media tries to define you with likes as a measure of your loveability.

Great stuff. Read more.

It’s Never Too Early to Start Teaching Wise Money Management

Crystal Paine, you know, Money Saving Mom, talks about teaching kids money management.

My husband was patiently explaining to Silas how much cash to put into each of our cash envelopes and then having Silas count it out. It melted my heart to see father and son working together on our family’s finances.Truly, I am so blessed to be married to a man who is committed to not only being wise and intentional in how we spend our money, but who is also committed to passing on money management skills to our children.
Oftentimes, people will ask us when they think you should start teaching your children about good money management. My answer? It’s never too early to start.

Wonderful encouragement. Read more.

Around the Warren:

The Summer Stretch

Liz Cottrill writes about summer. it’s beautiful

It must be true that the older you get, the more vivid the childhood memories. At this time of year, I can easily recapture all my younger feelings and experiences of summer. Can anything equal that delirious thrill of exploding out of the school building doors on that last day of school? Behind were the confines of the classroom, the lunch line, the tedious hours of lessons. The desk was empty, its books shut forever, and ahead lay endless days of freedom, sunshine, soft breezes, and simply hours and hours to fill with uncountable possibilities.

Read on!

The Number Who Lived…

Beautiful imagery from Paul Boekell, words from Eliot:

Get a closer look!

“Bear” Provides Beautiful Instruction

Loren Eaton brings another great review:

Remember those Dick and Jane books we parents were weaned on in grade school? It’s a wonder that any of us learned to love the written word from those tedious little volumes. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with titles that urge children to “come and see Spot” or “run fast, Sally,” they don’t make for scintillating reading. Of course, the dilemma lies in the inherent complexity of good storytelling. Excellent stories need to be communicated in complicated language—or so one might think if he’d never read Else Holmelund Minarik’s Little Bear series.

Eagle Flies and the Golden Arrow

Helena Sorensen writes and Amery Gulledge illustrates this entertaining tale;

Eagle Flies woke to the sight of his grandfather’s face, dark and lined with age, hovering over him.“This is the day,” he said, his voice as cracked as the skin around his eyes. “Go before the sun touches the mountains, Eagle Flies. Find the Golden Arrow, and you return to your people a man and a hero.”
How often Eagle Flies had heard his grandfather speak those words, and how often he had dreamed of beginning his quest. How often he had fashioned arrows and gutted fish and tended horses and run through the thick pine forests half distracted, his mind spinning with visions of his triumphant return. The sun would shine on him, and his people would raise a cheer, and he, Eagle Flies, would claim the title of Chief when the time came.

Yet here he was, waking on the morning his adventures would begin, and he was cold and anxious, his stomach shrunken to a hard knot.