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
A Nation of Healers
It’s easier sometimes to look at the world and wring our hands or complain, but David Brooks reminds us of there are people all around us who work every day to heal lives and hearts.
- The social fabric is tearing across this country, but everywhere it seems healers are rising up to repair their small piece of it. They are going into hollow places and creating community, building intimate relationships that change lives one by one.
Tips for Middle School
Michelle ICard offers advice to kids about to head to middle school.
- Across the country, 5th graders everywhere are making a break for summer and celebrating the end of all things elementary school. Goodbye to walking in quiet lines down the hallway, being stuck with the same kids all day in class, and being the oldest kids on campus. Hello to the great unknown.
If you’re headed to middle school next year, you might not know exactly what to expect, so here are seven tips to help you have a great time no matter comes your way.
Dads, Your Children Need You
Voddie Baucham writes at Desiring God blog what he has learned about the importance of having a father.
- I had no idea how much my father’s absence influenced me until I became a father myself. At that moment, and from then on, I began to see how not having my father in my life had shaped me. Even in his absence, his influence was unavoidable. This is important for new fathers to know. As the old saying goes, “much more is ‘caught’ than taught.” In other words, your children won’t just learn the things you teach them intentionally; they will glean much more from the things you have no idea you are teaching. This includes your mannerisms, sense of humor, temperament, and habits, to name a few. Even your presence (or absence) is influential. This truth is echoed in the wisdom of the Proverbs: “My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways” (Proverbs 23:26)
Best Children’s Books of 2016 So Far
We’re halfway through the year, so Siera Wilson is giving us a list of some of the best children’s books published so far this year,
- Here we are at the midway mark of 2016. The holidays are still a long way off (I can pretend, can’t I?) and all I can see is summer, glorious summer….
Besides giving people in the Pacific Northwest a serious attitude change (we can get grumpy by month four of grey skies), this time of year also means choosing The Best Children’s Books of the Year So Far.
Around the Warren
The Wealth of Children
Helena Sorensen explores the deep, deep value of children.
- This spring, we’ve been reading fairy tales—not the Disney versions, but the more brutal, more frightening collections of Andrew Lang and the brothers Grimm. These stories are far more violent than their modern retellings, and their outcomes are less certain. Sometimes the lovers are not reunited. Sometimes the hero makes a fatal mistake and is not rescued in the nick of time. There are themes of courage and compassion, of perseverance and patience, but one theme has popped up again and again, and this one is more disturbing than any gruesome description or dark plot twist. The theme is this: Children have little value.
The Giving Tree
Helena Sorensen reminds us of how Shel Silverstein’s book can point us to God.
- Every time I read Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, I cry.
“Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.”
The story is simple, heartbreaking, potent. On every page, I see the love of God contrasted with my fickleness, my wandering. I see the early days of our relationship, those first sweet meetings, when it was enough just to be together.
The Beautiful Place
Hannah Hubin and Jamin Still team up again to write and illustrate a short story.
- Once there was a girl who wanted, more than anything, to sail around the world.
It is a strange wish. A wish for an extraordinary thing.
She stands at the window of her house, at the very edge of her village, staring out into the sea. She waits for her father. But she knows that her father will not come as a man; he will come as a letter, scrawled out in a jagged hand formed by the breakers of the sea.
Something to Do with Your Kids
It’s been a scorcher of a week in North Carolina. I don’t know if you’ve felt the heat, but now that it’s officially summer, it may be time to bring out the water fun games!
And Something to Watch
Destin at Smarter Every Day explores the world of Superhero Jungle Pilots
Thank you for reading. We’re on your side.
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.
You can find her at carolyncgivens.com or on Facebook or Instagram at @carolyncgivens.
Latest posts by Carolyn Clare Givens (see all)
- The Warren & The World Vol 12, Issue 43 - December 5, 2024
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- The Warren & The World Vol 12, Issue 41 - November 23, 2024
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