Tag: girls (page 1 of 1)

Wildflowers, Issue 02: Summer

The summer issue of Wildflowers is here has been here for a while but I’m just now getting to reviewing it because things are crazy here (more on that soon!).

Wildflowers Magazine, Issue 02: Summer | Little Book, Big Story

But it is here, and it’s beautiful, and I get to give one of you an issue! Huzzah! If you missed my earlier post on Wildflowers magazine, here’s what you need to know: this is the second issue of a brand new magazine for girls. Wildflowers puts out a new issue each season (plus a bonus Christmas issue!) full of craft tutorials, art projects, photography, poetry, short fiction, coloring pages, book reviews (that’s where I come in), and more. I love being a part of something so beautiful and that blesses young women so much.

Wildflowers Magazine, Issue 02: Summer | Little Book, Big Story

You can enter to win a copy below, or you can skip all the hoping and waiting and crossing fingers and buy a copy right here. And stay tuned for the fall issue! It’ll be here before we know it.

Wildflowers Magazine, Issue 02: Summer | Little Book, Big Story

ENTER TO WIN A FREE COPY OF WILDFLOWERS!

To enter, fill in as many options as you like in the widget below. The giveaway closes on Friday, August 31. After that, the winner will be randomly selected and notified by email. Good luck!

 
 
 

For Such a Time as This

After reading a picture book that praised Eve for standing her ground against God, I almost abandoned my quest. But the stories of so many women are sown quietly throughout Scripture—I loved the idea of compiling those stories. I loved the idea of reminding our daughters, in a time when Paul is derided as a misogynist and the question of women’s roles in church is hotly debated, that they have a treasured place in God’s Great Story.

Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, but his mother, sister, and midwife shielded the infant Moses from Pharaoh’s wrath. Israel fell into fragments, yet God used one Moabite woman to sew redemption into Israel’s tapestry. Jesus was carried, labored over, and nursed by a woman. Women were the first to receive news of Jesus’ Resurrection, the first to see him raised. Surely some author has told all of those stories in an honest yet beautiful way—right? One that steers clear of the “bad girls of the Bible” motif?

Yes. The answer is yes. Angie Smith did it, and she did it well.

For Such a Time as This, by Angie Smith | Little Book, Big Story

For Such a Time as This is an anthology of stories about the women of Scripture, and there are more stories in it than I thought possible: Mary and Sarah and Esther each have their own chapter. Ruth does, too, of course. But Gomer is included, and Delilah and Jezebel and Sapphira. Smith does not shy away from the less savory characters of Scripture, but even in their stories finds the beauty of the gospel pricking through the soot and grime. She approaches each one from a gracious angle, asking not “What does this story say about me?” but “What does it say about God that he would graft this figure into his family tree, that he would use this figure to accomplish mighty things despite her brokenness?”

For Such a Time as This, by Angie Smith | Little Book, Big Story

Breezy Brookshire’s illustrations get the tension of that question just right: her fluid, glowing watercolors are punctuated by understated pencil drawings. By interweaving those two mediums, she captures the tension of our sin and God’s grace in a luminous way.

For Such a Time as This, by Angie Smith | Little Book, Big Story

For Such a Time as This is, I suppose, a selective story Bible. Because it focuses on the women of Scripture, it is not comprehensive. But it is also a devotional: each story ends with a section for young girls to read alone or with parents, as well as a prayer that parents can pray together for their daughters. This book quickly became a favorite for our family. We read it together and delighted in the stories, and now I find the book tucked under my daughter’s pillow. I find tracings of Esther scattered around her room. And I am thankful that she’s taking these stories to heart—may she love the Author as much as she loves his Story.


For Such a Time as This
Angie Smith, Breezy Brookshire (2014)

Brave Girls, Beautiful You

Nine. My eldest daughter just turned nine.

I thought this was momentous because it was her last single digit year, but no: a friend mentioned yesterday that she was halfway there, and the park around us got suddenly swimmy. It took me a minute to realize what my tear ducts understood instantly: “halfway there” meant halfway to adulthood, and the park looked swimmy because I was crying.

Yikes.

Brave Girls: Beautiful You (A 90-Day Devotional for Girls) | Little Book, Big Story

But this birthday called for a little something different, as birthday books go, and so I explored the “devotional Christian girl” shelves of Amazon. I found a cheap book, one that looked promising, and ordered it.

Brave Girls: Beautiful You was (whew!) not a theological mess in pink and floral print. It is a collection of devotions that encourage girls with a growing awareness of their appearance and identity to measure these things by God’s metric and to weigh their beauty on his scales. As I flipped through it, I was impressed by the depth of the devotions and the simple way they illustrated, through the imagery of “putting off” our old selves and “putting on” Christ, how a young girl can best glorify God in whatever situation comes her way.

Brave Girls: Beautiful You (A 90-Day Devotional for Girls) | Little Book, Big Story

There are quizzes in here, too, which initially made me nervous, but again and again I saw that they were intended as an expedition through a girl’s heart and not as a measurement of her value or success.

So, this is a new sort of book for this blog, because we are in a new sort of season. Brave Girls: Beautiful You is sweet, yes. But it is also rich, and, I hope, it is the sort of fuel my young daughter needs as she begins to set her sights on becoming a young woman.

Brave Girls: Beautiful You (A 90-Day Devotional for Girls) | Little Book, Big Story

Footnote

I was not able to read this book from cover-to-cover before I needed to wrap it up, so though I recommend it, I can’t promise that there isn’t some murky spot in there somewhere. But every page I landed on was good and true.


Brave Girls: Beautiful You
Jennifer Gerelds (2016)

A Little Princess

I love adventure stories. I love swashbuckling stories, and tales of the under dog, fighting against the odds. I love Treasure IslandRobinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. I really do.

And yet, I can’t help but notice that my blog is heavy on books with interesting heroines, nestled into the sort of stories that do more to warm the heart than get the blood pumping. But that’s just life with small daughters, I suppose (especially when the eldest of the clan* is a sensitive soul with a love of language, old-fashioned things and characters with rich inner lives).

A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett | Little Book, Big Story

Rest assured, I do intend to broaden their horizons with all of the books listed above—eventually. For now, we’re content with Laura and Heidi and Sara Crewe, heroine of the classic book, A Little Princess.

Sara is a singular character: though wealthy and doted upon, she is not spoiled and does not consider herself set apart from the other students at her boarding school, despite the fact that the headmistress singles her out for display as a “model student” whenever visitors come to the school. But when the death of her darling father leaves her penniless and without a guardian, Sara suffers a dramatic fall in fortunes. The question at the heart of this book is one put to her by the snobbish Lavinia, who disparages the gift for storytelling and “supposing” that draw the other girls to Sara:

“It’s all very well to suppose things if you have everything,” said Lavinia. “Could you suppose and pretend things if you were a beggar and lived in a garret?”

Sara . . . looked thoughtful. “I believe I could,” she said. “If one was a beggar, one would have to suppose and pretend all the time. But it mightn’t be easy.”

This is a book rich in virtue, because—unlike the heroine of Hodgson’s better-known book, The Secret Garden—Sara is an admirable character from start to finish. Though not a literal princess, she is the sort of heroine that we are glad for our daughters to know.

A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett | Little Book, Big Story

A Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905)


A Little Princess | Little Book, Big STory

*This is a special edition post because “the eldest of our clan,” Lydia, turns six this weekend. Shocking! This will be an especially literary birthday for her, as her gifts from us are all book related: a copy of The Lost Princess by George MacDonald, as well as The Complete Flower Fairies, by Cicely Barker. To top off the literariness, Sarah and I framed the cover of an old copy of The Princess and the Goblin for Lydia to hang in her corner of their shared room (the love of that girl for Irene and Curdie knows no bounds).