Tag: classic
When we celebrated my birthday last month, I opened one daughter’s gift and found a book tucked in it alongside her present. I couldn’t keep the book, she explained, but I had to read it. […]
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 […]
Was there ever a better narrator than E. Nesbit? The way she banters with the reader in charming asides and includes her own voice as a part of the story makes reading her work an […]
“ ‘I absolutely adored The Little White Horse.‘ —J. K. Rowling That sentence alone persuaded me to purchase The Little White Horse, a book I knew nothing else about by an author I’d never heard […]
I read the first five books when we were newly married. We lived in a studio apartment where the shag carpet smelt of fried hashbrowns, and our mattress doubled as both sofa and bed. While drunk […]
The idea of abridging or adapting classics for young readers used to make me squeamish. But when I began collecting books for our school library, I started to see the sense in it: if done […]
In that last month of pregnancy, strangers asked me the same questions on repeat: When was I due? How was I feeling? Did I know what I was having? I didn’t mind this. What I […]
I didn’t sit down and think, “A ha! I have it—the perfect edifying exercise!” It happened on its own one day at lunch, when I picked up A Child’s Garden of Verses and began reading poetry to […]
Once, a friend sat on the couch with Lydia, reading The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. Like many of Beatrix Potter’s books, Benjamin Bunny is a meandering story, so while he read and Lydia listened, I went back to […]
Four children find a coin that grants wishes, but it only grants wishes by halves. Adventure and hilarity ensue. The plot of Half Magic might strike you, as it did me, as the sort of thing […]
