making space for creativity
This is my fourth year of putting together a list of books that Lily loved over the last year (and her older brother Jackson loved when he was four). Many four year olds really start to have longer and longer attention spans for books, and it makes finding read aloud books easier in many ways….
2023 Newbery winner (I know, you thought I was done with them!), Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson is a tale about Homer and Ada, two enslaved children running away from a plantation to a secret swamp maroon community called Freewater. Told from various points of view, Freewater follows many characters traveling to and from the maroon community…
I love children’s Bibles! And we have quite a few around here. A good children’s Bible helps children enter into the big story of God making and redeeming the world. From board book Bibles that you can read in five minutes to full text bibles that would take you 75 hours to read straight through,…
Happy Epiphany friends! For a long time, I wasn’t exactly sure what Epiphany was because it seemed sometimes to be a specific day, other times a whole season, and sometimes was more of a concept. It turns out it really is all three! The word means “a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential…
My favorite books from this year were heavy on theology and Christian formation. I loved The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ by Rowan Williams, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God by Dallas Willard, and The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory by Abigail Favale….
Merry Christmas Friends! This year I discovered that the Hays family tartan basically looks like a Christmas tartan. So we are all sporting Christmas plaid this year for Christmas. The big events of this year were our summer trip to Rocky Mountain National Park … and the kids starting school in the Fall! Doing both…
This Fall is my fifth year participating in documenting in pictures a regular day in the Fall. It’s really an Instagram challenge and hashtag (#OneDayHH), which I have done and enjoyed, but I really enjoy taking my time and reflecting on those pictures in a blog post. (You can see my previous blog posts from…
A generous family from Evan’s school invited us to spend four nights at their amazing Door County house just south of the little town of Fish Creek. Even though we love the Great Lakes and have traveled all over Wisconsin, we had never been to Door Country! I think that maybe I went when I…
Our big adventure this summer was our trip to Rocky Mountain National Park with our kids ages six and four! We stayed in Granby, Colorado for six full days of hiking. (Fancy hand drawn map of our hikes below.) It was nearly a two week road trip from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Granby, Colorado. We drove…
I love to remember a romantic anniversary. All spring I’ll give my husband Evan a running tally of our anniversaries: late February was 16 years since our first awkward date to see the play The Good Person of Szechwan, early March was 16 years since I asked you to drive me to an Ash Wednesday…
The Newbery Award has been given each year since 1922 for “The Most Distinguished Contribution to American Literature for Children.” But “children” is a pretty large category: what a 3 year old might love is not the same as what a 13 year old might. As a general rule, most Newberies are good reads for…
This is the third year I’ve written down all the books that my picky (or shall we say “possessing discerning literary tastes”) daughter has enjoyed. Lily is fun-loving and opinionated, especially about books. So here are the books that both my husband and I enjoyed reading to her (and her six year old brother Jackson.)…
After spending over 8 years reading the 101 Newbery award winning books, I have some favorites. I love a good book list, so that was my original plan for this post: list my favorite 42 Newberies. But as I was telling my husband Evan about this, he said he wanted to know what I thought…
2022 Newbery winner, The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera. Petra Peña wants to become a storyteller like her Abuelita, but instead she is leaving her beloved Lita (what she calls her grandmother). Together with her little brother Javier and her scientist parents, Petra is among some of the few people to escape the destruction…
We’ve made it folks! I’ve read through 100 Newberies, reviewed over eight years! This is the last set of quick recommendations and ratings for Newberies 76 through 100. (If you’d like to see the first three sets here is # 1-25, 26-50, and 51-75. For links to each individual review you can go here.) This last…