I have heard Pollyanna mocked often enough in my life that I became scornful of her myself. This scornfulness was unjust, being based on lack of knowledge. Of course, I vaguely remember the movie on TV, dim childhood recollections of a girl climbing out of her room into a tree, being spunky. After reading Pollyanna… Read More Are You Glad?
You will note in the list below that half the books I read this past month are children’s books. I read some of them to my children, some of them to investigate for making recommendations or writing reviews for parents, and some of them just because I wanted to. Reading children’s books is pleasurable on… Read More March in Books
A couple of weeks ago we had friends for dinner and my Dad. These friends are great listeners and enjoy a good yarn, so I prompted Dad to tell them some stories from his childhood in rural Georgia. He had us in stitches. They were in awe when I told them that ten years ago,… Read More Telling Family Stories
Good question. I am asked this often, most recently, with the request for very specific answers. The short answer is, “Any which way I can.” If you live to read, or more accurately, live by reading, books are everywhere and strategizing how to spend time in them is as habitual as sleeping, eating, brushing teeth.… Read More How Do You Fit Reading into Your Busy Life?
Profoundly life changing things happen in ordinary ways—at least that is my experience. I’m sure, in my ten-year-old eagerness to enter into a new story, I checked To Kill a Mockingbird out from the library without any inkling of the effect it would have on my life. I doubt if I had finished the first… Read More A Salute to Harper Lee
Last week, I interrupted the fascinating advice of an uneducated grandmother to her minimally educated daughter from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. One page of Shakespeare per day, is her counsel. Here is the second of the two essential books recommended for the mother to read to Francie, who is a baby at the time… Read More A Second Visit to Brooklyn, Part 2
I made a friend in junior high who I got to visit with again just a few weeks ago. There have been more than four decades between visits and yet her impact on my life has been powerful. She was there for me during a rough time back then and offered me wisdom, courage and,… Read More A Second Visit to Brooklyn
As I write, the temperatures in Virginia rival the bitter winters of the far north. My children and I just finished reading a book about a hero of those brutal, wintry regions. Canada values the feat of courage and fortitude displayed by one of her pioneers so much that a statue stands on the bank… Read More Winter Inspiration for the Entire Family
I often joke that I’m waiting for a “normal” school year to pass, one without interruption of moving, family death or illness, or other significant event that interferes with our daily routine. I always seem to have to be carrying on school lessons in the midst of something pressing or unusual or distracting. It is a peril of homeschooling.… Read More Staying on Track
In the long, long story in which we are characters, the turning of a new year is like the opening of a new chapter in the story of our lives. Only a reader knows the thrill of excitement opening the cover and turning to the first page of an unread book brings. The book itself may be new or… Read More New Books, New Friends, and a New Year