Category: Ages 8–11
We recently took a vacation—a proper vacation, with moving sidewalks and deep-fried Oreos and fireflies and speed boats—and when we came home, the spiders had moved in. The afternoons still felt sticky-hot, but the mornings […]
L. M. Montgomery’s books make me want to befriend some patch of land and explore it thoroughly until I know and have named every tree, every brook, every starry-eyed flower in its thickets. I want […]
I knew two things about this book when I grabbed it off the library shelf: John Brown was a controversial guy whose legacy had something to do with a militia, maybe. No such controversy surrounds […]
Important Notice: Last year, we held a family meeting to settle our last-day-of-school tradition. Because I get to (sort of arbitrarily) pick which day is our last, this seemed important. And because, at the time […]
It has been a while since I reviewed a classic children’s chapter book. And that’s not because I don’t love them—I do. Profusely. But keeping two voracious readers supplied with quality books means I have […]
I love finding a book that seems impossible to describe. Reviewing it is a challenge—not a “cleaning the girls’ bedroom after we’ve all put it off for far too long” sort of challenge (I hate […]
Ages 5–8, Ages 8–11, History & Biography
Patricia St. John: The Story Behind the Stories | Irene Howat
I did not grow up knowing Jesus, but I have many friends who did. And I love to ask those friends what they enjoyed reading as a child. While I read Goosebumps, I wonder aloud, what […]
And now, let’s discuss child labor laws and the plight of Victorian chimney sweeps. Did you know that during the Victorian era children were the preferred “instruments” for cleaning chimneys because they were small and […]
As a child, I found marriage confusing. I lived with each of my parents half of the time and saw them happily married to step-parents I loved. But my life had been revised by divorce, and […]
Some might consider what I’m about to do cruel. First, I’m going to rave about The Mistmantle Chronicles. I’m going to tell you that they are everything I look for in a book. They are: […]
