A few weeks ago on the first Thursday of November, I documented our day by posting hourly pictures on Instagram. This is something that the wonderful Laura Tremaine (originally with her blog the Hollywood Housewife) started many years ago, but it’s only my second time participating. It’s lot of fun to look back on past…
Author: Amy Rogers Hays
Newbery Review #53 (The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox, 1974)
Paula Fox’s book The Slave Dancer won the 1974 Newbery Medal. It’s the brutal portrayal of an illegal 1840s American slave ship through the eyes of an impressed young white New Orleans teen musician, Jessie Bollier, brought to make the slaves “dance” during the exercise time. Even before the ship has picked up its cargo…
12 Awesome Date Night Movies : An Anniversary Post
This year for our anniversary in May, my mom took Jackson out for a long morning walk, and we snuggled with our 2 week old daughter on the couch, and got to watch a movie and eat bacon wrapped dates. It was heavenly. Our movie consumption after Jackson was born dropped severely and involved watching…
Newbery Review # 52 (Julie of the Wolves, George, 1973)
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George is the 52nd Newbery. It follows the life of an Inuit (Eskimo) girl named Miyax (Julie is her English name) after the death of her mother, raised by her hunter father before an aunt forces her to leave the desolate hunting camps to live with her…
Liliana June’s Baptism
Two weekends ago, family and friends gathered to celebrate the baptism of our little Liliana June. As someone who didn’t grow up seeing a lot of infant baptisms (I was baptized twice, neither time as an infant, incidentally) the beauty and grace of infant baptisms is so striking. We had family and friends pour…
Newbery Review # 51 (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, O’Brien, 1972)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien is one of my all time favorite books. I distinctly remember visiting my cousins in Texas when I was 11 (they had just come off the mission field in Cameroon) and my Uncle Skip was reading this to his three kids, and I…
Two Months into Mothering Two
Sweet Lily is 11 weeks old, and I am happy to say that we are adjusting well to being a family of four. For so much of Jackson’s infancy I could not imagine how I could do an infant and a toddler at once, but somehow we are doing it. As I reflect back…
Books I’m Actually Recommending from the first 50 Newberies
I’ve made it through 50 Newbery books! The good news is that they really do keep getting better. I stopped at the first 25 to offer up my favorites and general recommendations for those early Newberies (1922-1946) fully in this post. Picking my favorites for this second set of 25 (from 1947 to 1971) is…
Baby Lily’s Birth Story
Our little Lily arrived at 6:30 pm right smack on her due date May 12th. This was especially awesome since beginning at 37 weeks my blood pressure started to inch up, and words like preeclampsia and gestational hypertension started floating around my doctor’s office, both of which could mean, besides the obvious health risks,…
Newbery Review #50 (Summer of the Swans, Byars, 1971)
The 50th Newbery Award went to Betsy Byars’s coming of age tale, The Summer of the Swans. The story follows 14-year-old Sara Godfrey who is deep in the middle of some quality teen angst (Are her shoes too big? The wrong color? Why does everything make her mad, and sad, and blah?) over…
Jesus Hide & Seek : A Toddler’s Resurrection Theology
Last month, I found a board book at the library about Easter for my two-year-old son Jackson. Honestly, he was most interested in the pictures of the spring bunnies and ducks, but when we got to the bit about everyone being sad that Jesus died, Jackson said “sad” in a solemn way. He’s been…
Newbery Review # 49 (Sounder, Armstrong, 1970)
William H. Armstrong’s 1970 Newbery Award Winning book, Sounder, is not really a book to like or dislike per se. If it weren’t based on a true story, maybe it’d be easier to like it or dislike it. But instead it just is. It’s the evocative and very difficult story of a…
Preparing For Baby # 2
I’m about three months from my due date for baby number two, and I alternate between feeling that is a crazy short time or an incredibly long amount of time. It seems short when I think about my sweet newly 2-year-old Jackson, and long when I think about how much Wisconsin winter we have…
Newbery Review # 48 (High King, Alexander, 1969)
The 48th Newbery was such a treat for me to re-read: the last book in one of my favorite series The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander: The High King. This is the very last adventure of Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper, Gurgi his furry mostly human loyal companion, Flewddur Fflam the exaggerating…
An Ultrasound For My Birthday
This year for my birthday we had our 20 week anatomy ultrasound for our second baby! It was a fantastic way to celebrate being 33. I can’t remember looking forward to my birthday more. I loved keeping Jackson’s gender a surprise for his birthday, but for this baby we decided to find out. It…