There’s a forecast of snow and ice for my weekend and I’m beginning to feel like a kid again…I don’t have anywhere to go and I’m just waiting for a white world.

Around the Web

On Poetry, Programming, Chaos, and Cosmos

My friend Micah Hawkinson is a man who builds worlds of pure thought-stuff…both in poetry and programming.

• Afew years ago at Hutchmoot, Pete Peterson said something that has been enriching the leaf-mould of my mind ever since. Quoting Walt Wangerin, Jr., Pete talked about how the Sanskrit word cinoti “makes of the poet ‘a heaper into heaps, and a piler into piles.’”
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Nonfiction about Nature

Megan at Redeemed Reader has nature books to recommend for these days of winter.

• Reptiles Everywhere, Bruno the Beekeeper, A World of Plants, and Fungarium offer plenty of fascinating information about the natural world.
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A Time to Mourn

Jessica Roan reminds us that we all mourn—even the small losses of our lives.

• She really was extraordinary—funny, loving, and firm when she needed to be. If a perfect teacher exists, she would be at the top of the list, in our house anyway. Thankfully for us, our younger son was in her class, not once, but twice. When we found out he would have his kindergarten teacher again for 5th grade, we were elated. The unpredictability of 2020 was especially difficult for him. While we couldn’t be sure which activities, even school itself, would go on, we could be sure about one thing: Mrs. W. And she delivered—suddenly breaking into song, encouraging dance-offs, dressing up in wild costumes. If there was anything an 11-year-old would love, she did it.
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Encanto and the Miracle of Empathy

Shigé Clark explores empathy in the new Disney favorite.

• One of the reasons I love fantasy as a genre is because of the inclusion of magic. In fantasy stories—the good ones anyway—magic can reveal the spiritual realities that we all sense in life but can’t see, and have no material frame to express.
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Around the Warren

Here There Be Dragons

A classic from Glenn McCarty out of the archives.

• At the bottom of the map in the front of the splendid new edition of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, with illustrations by Jemima Catlin, the area devoted to Mirkwood Forest is labeled with the simple inscription, “There are spiders.”
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Liz Cottrill examines a lovely middle-grade novel.

• Children believe in the impossible. Stories with heroes who face hardship, setbacks, and even defeat win their instant sympathy and when those heroes overcome, succeed and rise to fame and fortune, the child, who has been the hero’s fan from the start, is strengthened in the conviction that anything can happen if you try.
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Something to Do with Your Kids

Need some wintering crafts? Have we got a list for you!

Something to Watch

Last week, tea, this week potatoes. I hope you’re enjoying these food history videos I keep finding.

Thanks for reading. We’re on your side. 

–The Story Warren Team

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Carolyn Clare Givens

Carolyn Clare Givens is a displaced Northerner exploring the foreign ways of the South. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her literary cat, Lord Peter Wimsey. She's the author of The King's Messenger and Rosefire and in her free time helps run Bandersnatch Books.

You can find her at carolyncgivens.com or on Facebook or Instagram at @carolyncgivens.

Latest posts by Carolyn Clare Givens (see all)

• Beauty for All - January 5, 2026
• The Warren & The World Vol 13, Issue 38 - October 11, 2025
• The Warren & The World Vol 13, Issue 37 - October 4, 2025