I hope you’ll enjoy these posts we’ve gathered for you bring joy and delight in these dark days leading up to the shortest day of the year (or, if you’re on the other end of the globe, in the light evenings leading up to the longest day!)

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Comic Review: The Light Princess

Jonny Jimison has a recommendation for a new comic book.

Cave Pictures Publishing is an ambitious new comic book imprint that offers a little bit of everything: a dystopian fantasy, a superhero team, a zombie saga, a wild west tale…and an adaptation of the classic George MacDonald fairy tale, The Light Princess.
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C. S. Lewis on the Enchantment and Disenchantment of Riding a Bicycle

Justin Taylor digs into an essay by C.S. Lewis.

Only C. S. Lewis could take a common experience—the various ways in which we think throughout life about the riding of a bicycle—and use it as an illustration of the four universal phases of life, and how they point above and beyond themselves to something that nothing in this world can satisfy.
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Best Nonfiction Children’s Books of 2018

‘Tis the season of Best of lists and Melissa Taylor has one for us.

These best 2018 nonfiction children’s books –picture books, chapter books, and biographies– merit reading and re-reading and buying for your home, classroom, or library as they are all high-quality with engaging writing that makes the book’s information relevant, memorable, and interesting. Happy reading!
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Fun Things to Do During Winter Break: Including Free Planner!

Over at What Do We Do All Day, Erica has a great list of activities to keep on hand during the semester break.

School is about to break for the holidays and you don’t have a plan!
No holiday trip, no classes, and it seems like everybody else is out of town, so no, you can’t send the kids and their friends down to play table football in the basement for hours. And letting them play on the iPad for two weeks doesn’t seem like that great of an idea.
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Celebrations

Helena Sorensen meditates on the celebrations we share.

“Celebrations punctuate our year, and our punctuations define us as a people.”
–Malcolm Smith
The people of ancient Ireland marked their year with eight solar and lunar celebrations. Every six weeks or so, they gathered, performed religious rites, feasted, danced, and held competitions. If a man committed a crime, he could be excluded from the festivities as punishment, for that is how deeply those people valued their celebrations. Celebration was central to their understanding of life and community.
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Interview and Free Audio Story from Author and Green Ember Editor James D. Witmer

S.D. Smith sat down with James D. Witmer for an interview and to share an audio story.

I was delighted to sit down in the Forge with editor and author James D. Witmer to talk about his role in editing The Green Ember Series (including an interesting detail about Lord Rake) and his new book, A Year in the Big Old Garden.
And I’m delighted to share that James is giving away the best story (in my opinion) from the book: The Happiest Grey Squirrel. The narrator is great, too!
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