Story Warren

Kindling Imagination for Kingdom Anticipation

The Warren & The World Vol 10, Issue 17

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Sorry to miss a week of sharing links from around the web and the run-down from Story Warren with you! After avoiding it for two years, the plague caught up with me last week and I was out for the count. I’m feeling better now and I know I must be recuperating because I smelled the cat litter box for the first time in 10 days this morning. In other news, I need to change the litter box.

Around the Web

Love and Lament: How to Help Our Suffering Friends

Suffering is not limited to the dark months of the year, and you may be walking through life with a friend in pain. If you are, these are some good words.

  • We all naturally turn to something or someone when we are suffering. For me, during our daughter’s cancer journey, it was obsessive cleaning (I even broke a mop aggressively scrubbing my floors until the plastic handle snapped). The things we turn to for comfort, control, or consistency—like my mopping—aren’t necessarily bad. But in and of themselves, they aren’t going to relieve our fears or satisfy our hearts for long. 
    Read more

New from Rabbit Room Press: The Last Sweet Mile

Speaking of lament, I don’t often make a sales pitch here in this newsletter, but if you’re going to purchase one book this year, let it be Allen Levi’s The Last Sweet Mile. I’m delighted that this book is coming back into print, as I so often wish to recommend it to people, but it’s been a challenge to find the past few years. Levi’s memoir of walking beside his dying brother through his last days is a beautiful meditation on friendship, love, brotherhood, and hope.

  • The Last Sweet Mile, Allen Levi’s memoir of great loss and enduring faith, is re-releasing in paperback edition through Rabbit Room Press this summer.
    When Allen Levi’s brother Gary was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, neither realized they were about to embark on the best year of their lives. 
    Read more

Alice’s Farm: a Rabbit’s Tale by Maryrose Wood

You might know Maryrose Wood from her Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series. Betsy at Redeemed Reader introduces another of her books.

  • Alice and her brother Thistle try to save a human’s farm in this sweet animal story by the author of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place.
    Read more


5 Creative Ways to Get Outside with Your Kids

Need a little motivation to get off the devices and out the door this summer? Here are some ideas.

  • As a mom of two nature-loving young boys – outdoor play is a daily occurrence no matter the temperature outside. Now that spring is officially here and the days are longer, we spend most of our time outside. Plus, stepping outdoors is an easier feat without all of the added layers of winter clothes, so we are out the door quicker.
    Read more

Around the Warren

No Other Gods

Lindsey Murphy teaches children about idolatry.

  • Want to know my little classroom secret?
    I love to teach children about idolatry.
    Not what you’re used to hearing from a Christian educator?  Let me explain.
    Read more

Discovering and Sharing

Leslie Bustard loves children’s books, and she loves to share them.

  • I remember a decade or more ago while helping my friend Beth reorganize her homeschooling room, seeing her table spread with children’s picture books and chapter books, and saying, “You are allowed to get rid of books you don’t like.” Responding to her quizzical look, I said, “If reading a book out loud to one of the girls hurts my stomach, I don’t keep it around.”
    Read more

On Christians Reading Fiction: Where the Children Live

Kelly Keller wraps up her series On Christians Reading Fiction.

  • This is the last entry of this series, and it is the simplest.
    My argument today is just this: if you have children — yours or someone else’s — in your life, you should have stories in your life. Stories are where children live. Children recite stories, create stories, act out stories, and rehearse stories. It is part of how they arrive to this earth, and if we are careful not to toy with them, it is how they will remain.
    Read more

Redemption and Hope in Heidi

Kathryn Butler takes a look at a classic.

  • When my son first discovered Johanna Spyri’s Heidi nonchalantly tucked into our stack of daily reading books, he revolted. The book jacket, with the story’s namesake cartwheeling across a meadow high in the Alps, violated his 9-year-old principles — specifically, his tightly held adage, “thou shalt not read books featuring protagonists in pigtails.” “No way,” he said, chucking the book into a basket when I pressed him. “I am not listening to that!”
    Read more

Something to Do with Your Kids

There are a group of adults of a certain age—many who would fall in the Xennial mini-generation—who are still mourning the downgrade of Pluto’s status to dwarf planet. I certainly am one of them, and from time to time I consider whether the three weeks I spent on a research project about the ninth planet in the solar system in middle school were wasted. But here’s the thing, planet or dwarf, Pluto is still a really interesting celestial body, and these Pluto facts coloring sheets are a great way to learn about it.

Something to Watch

A fascinating exploration of the history of the Silk Road.

Thanks for reading. We’re on your side. 

–The Story Warren Team

Carolyn Clare Givens
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