making space for creativity
Like the children’s game, “Red Light, Green Light,” Pentecost Sunday can sneak up on you, a quick red week before the long green summer. Easter and Christmas are hard to miss: they each have month-long, purple-clad fasts culminating in vigils the night before to prepare our hearts and minds for the shining white and gold…
2002 Newbery winner, A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (2002) is set in 12th century Korea. It chronicles orphan boy Tree-ear’s apprenticeship to master potter Min. The village of Ch’ul’po is renowned in all Korea for its beautiful green clay ceramics and made slightly unusual by the presence of a crippled homeless bridge dweller Crane-man…
Last year, Holy Week at home with the kids was such a special time. And we are largely planning on doing the same things (You can read here a full description of what we did here: Holy Week with Toddlers), but this year I did want to try and do some Easter Vigil Readings. For…
2001 Newbery winner, A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck (2001) follows Mary Alice as she spend the year with her formidable Grandmother in a little town in rural Illinois in the middle of the Great Depression. It’s a gem of a Newbery: short, funny, and skillfully written. A sequel to the delightful A Long Way…
For Lent, right before we go to bed, we’ve been lighting a candle, singing a song, and saying a short evening prayer compiled by our dear family friends Jim and June Young. During Advent and Christmastide our kids loved lighting the Advent candle with the wreath and singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” in our…
2000 Newbery winner, Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis: Bud Caldwell, age ten, is a motherless boy with spunk and a hunch that he can find his long-lost father. Set in depression era Flint, Michigan, Bud is a young African American boy who has been at an orphanage or out at various foster families…
Over the past few months we’ve been developing our home church practice after Wisconsin’s weather made outdoor church services no longer possible. And while we miss church a lot, especially the eucharist, it’s been a sweet thing to do church together in a way that’s meaningful for each member of the family. I think it’ll…
1999 Newbery winner, Holes, by Louis Sachar stars Stanley Yelnats, a chronically unlucky boy who is sent to the juvenile detention Camp Greenlake on false charges of theft. With half the story taking place a hundred years before, the past and present of Stanley, the other inmate/campers, and “The Warden” are spun into a tight,…
This is my 7th year of birthday reading lists! (You can see the others here: 30 // 31 // 32 // 33 // 34 // 35). My top picks for this year are The Soul of Discipline, Okay for Now, Bandersnatch, Fertile Ground, The War that Saved My Life, Krakatoa, and The Body. Adult Fiction 1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This…
1998 Newbery winner, Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse is a verse novel set in Depression-era panhandle Oklahoma during the devastating Dust Bowl. Narrator Billie Jo is an only child of fourteen whose mother is finally pregnant with a much anticipated new baby while their farm is enduring a terrible drought. I came into…
Dear Friends and Family, Last week we started doing a little Advent devotional time with the kids. Pajamas on, teeth brushed, kitchen clean, all the lights off we gather around the table. We strike a match and light our first beeswax advent wreath candle and say together “Jesus Christ is the light of the world!”…
1997 Newbery winner, The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg stars four unlikely sixth grade academic quiz bowl team members. Exploring the backstory of each character’s specific talents and knowledge, the book is told in a series of five narrators: the four competitors and their teacher and coach Mrs. Olinski. The stories are told…
I’m 75% through the Newbery Award winning books! Here’s a quick look at # 1-25 and 26-50. For this batch (#51-75) from 1972 to 1996, some of my very favorite books of all time I got to re-read (again!). These are books I have returned to and re-read over and over: Mrs. Frisby and the…
1996 Newbery winner, The Midwife’s Apprentice, by Karen Cushman has long been a favorite of mine by one of my long-time favorite authors. I think that reading Karen Cushman’s first novel Catherine Called Birdy (1994) was one of the reasons I wanted to study early modern English history in college and graduate school. I love…
1995 Newbery winner, Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech is part road trip tale of a girl and her grandparents, part mystery story told along the way. In both, main character Sal goes looking for answers about why her mother left and comes to terms with what happened the year before. Since this book has…