Tag: series (page 1 of 4)

Emily of Deep Valley

Firstly: you may have noticed the blog looking spiffier, perhaps? For some reason, the week after Christmas consistently inspires me to give this site a makeover. It always seems so fun at first, like a project I’ll start and finish between rounds of Nertz with my girls, but then I end up deep in the weeds, reformatting the titles for every single post I’ve written over the past almost-decade, and I invariably think to myself, around page 67 of 96, I’ve made a huge mistake.

But when I’m done, I’m always glad I did it: with every redesign of this site, I try to make it tidier, easier for you to use, and (of course) prettier. This time, I’ve actually resurrected and updated an old design—one whose simplicity and clean white margins made it one of my favorites. If you find any broken links or if there was something from the previous design you miss, please let me know! You are ultimately the reason I tinker with this site at all—I want it to be a pleasure to comb through as you look for good books. So please do reach out in the comments or via email and let me if there’s anything I can do to make it so.

And now . . . today’s book! A beauty!


When I finally picked up Mitali Perkins’s lauded Steeped in Stories, I was delighted to find that six of the seven children’s books she lists as her favorites were my favorites, too. But best of all, the seventh—Emily of Deep Valley—was a book so brand new to me that I’d never even heard of it. I’d read the first few Betsy-Tacy books when my girls were very small, but apart from that, I knew nothing about Maud Hart Lovelace’s work. And I’d certainly never read Emily of Deep Valley.

That, my friends, has been remedied—and swiftly!

Perhaps it’s too simplistic to refer to Maud Hart Lovelace as a “Minnesotan L.M. Montgomery,” but that’s the most concise way I can think of to send all you Anne of Green Gables fans out in search of this book immediately. I’ll start there: if you love L.M. Montgomery’s books, look up Maud Hart Lovelace post haste!

Emily of Deep Valley, by Maud Hart Lovelace | Little Book, Big Story

She’s best known for her Betsy-Tacy books, but what I didn’t realize is that the Betsy-Tacy series, much like Montgomery’s Anne series, follows its characters into adulthood. Emily of Deep Valley is the stand-alone story of Emily Webster, a girl just graduating high school a few years after Betsy and Tacy. She feels on the outside of her friends, who are all heading off to college while Emily stays home to care for her grandfather.

This is a story rich in themes of sacrifice and love, one that challenges readers to stop looking over the fence at the next green field and start cultivating the soil they’re standing in. Emily keenly feels the boundaries placed about her, and yet she learns to flourish there—ultimately getting to know and care for a community of Syrian refugees that many in her town have overlooked.

Emily of Deep Valley is a sweet story, yes, but its roots go deep: Lovelace asks meaningful questions about race and relationships (Emily’s first love interest is most emphatically Not a Keeper) and true friendship. And it’s one that will send readers—in our house, at least—into the rest of Lovelace’s books, eager to read them all.


Emily of Deep Valley
Maud Hart Lovelace (1950)

The Shiloh Series

We live in a world blighted by sin. This past year, we’ve seen startling markers of it: the day I first drove downtown last spring and saw the shops closed and the streets empty, I felt it. This is not how it was meant to be. But even on a day like that, when everything felt marred and twisted, I could hear chickadees calling and could look up and see cirrus clouds curling in the upper realms of the sky. The sun rose over the bay, enlivening our stilled city with its light.

But in Shiloh, the brokenness of the world is evident all the time, from any vantage point. The villages are ensconced in the Shadow, a darkness so palpable that the sky scarcely lightens even at midday. Most villagers have no memory of the sun; they do not believe it exists. But Amos’s father believes and, though ridiculed for it, he remembers: This is not how it was meant to be. Unlike most of his neighbors, he refuses to believe that the Shadow is all there is.

The Shiloh Series, by Helena Sorenson | Little Book, Big Story

Helena Sorenson’s story begins in the dark, and it is a heavy tale, one that is honest about the damage of sin and the havoc it wreaks in our hearts. Her characters go on grueling journeys through the darkness of Shiloh, but the story is, as the back of the book promises, one of courage and hope: she brings the story to a glorious conclusion.

There is much to love about these books, but I was particularly enthralled by the mythology behind the land of Shiloh. The stories of the world’s creation and of the coming of the shadow gave me a sense that the world extended beyond the borders of the story, and that there were other stories happening in this world that hadn’t yet been told. This is something we need to hear often: in our world, too, there are stories still being told. God hasn’t finished with us yet.


The Shiloh series
Helena Sorenson (2013)

Big Questions (Series)

Today at lunch, my seven-year-old summed it up neatly. “Is the virus going to last forever?” she asked.

I took a few meditative bites of my cold leftovers before I answered. “No,” I said. “It won’t. I don’t know how long it will last, but it won’t last forever.” Meaning: eventually Jesus will come back. The pandemic will definitely be over by then.

But this has been a grueling year for parenting, hasn’t it? Aspects of it have been pleasant: I’ve loved (most of) the increased time together and the new ways we’ve found to spend it—making killer calzones, for example. Or training our puppy not to bite us. I’ve even appreciated the chance to walk through something difficult with my daughters and to show them that our faith has a strong and sure foundation.

But at times, I am tired. So often, I don’t have answers. The longer this pandemic goes on, the more weary I feel, and the more acutely I feel my inadequacy. I am their mother, one of the first two people they come to with questions. But I know better now that I am not the Keeper of Answers or the Fixer of All Things. I am just a woman who is also their mom—a fallen being in need of grace, too.

So.

What to do when the news looks bleak yet again and we all groan, How long? Or when our kids come to us with weighty, legitimate questions, hoping that we will give them honest answers? In those moments, I like to take a cue from Chris Morphew, an author and school chaplain who doesn’t just answer those questions but who writes whole books about them.

Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?, by Chris Morphew | Little Book, Big Story

Each of the short chapter books in his Big Questions series tackles a tough topic: a really tough topic. How Do We Know Christianity is True?, for example. Or Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen? And he doesn’t condescend to kids as he writes. His examples of “bad things” aren’t “I didn’t make the soccer team” laments that any kid going through a pandemic could sneeze at. No, he admits what many of us don’t like to: hard things happen, and they often happen to kids.

But he doesn’t stop there, and that’s key. He reminds kids, too, that God sees them and he does have a plan, even though it often sprawls far beyond our comfort zone and asks way more of us than we think we can give. He reminds readers that Christianity gives us satisfying answers to some of life’s hardest questions, and it also gives us the freedom when we need it to say humbly, “I don’t know.” It gives us the consolation that, hey, Somebody knows. And he doesn’t make mistakes.

All three of these books have been great conversation starters at our house, as well as a balm for my occasional fatigue—a reminder, I guess, that these questions do have answers, even though I don’t always have the answers handy. And that, at any age, it’s okay to ask big questions.


Big Questions (series)
Chris Morphew; Emma Randall (2021)


Disclosure: I did receive copies of these book for review, but I was not obligated to review these books or compensated for my review in any way. I share these books with you because I love them, not because I was paid to do so.

Misty of Chincoteague

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. I’d love it, she said.

She was right.

From the way Marguerite Henry describes the sandy beaches of Assateague Island to the beauty and fury of the island’s wild horses, I loved everything about Misty of Chincoteague. Paul and Maureen Beebe live on Chincoteague Island, where they train and sell wild horses with their grandparents (I’d argue those grandparents are among some of the most lovable in children’s literature).

Every year, riders from Chincoteague venture to neighboring Assateague Island, where they round up some of the island’s wild horses and bring them back to Chincoteague to sell. This year, it’s finally Paul’s turn to join the “pony penning,” and he and Maureen have their hearts set on not just any horse, but the wild and elusive Phantom—a mare known for escaping the riders year after year.

Misty of Chincoteague (Series), by Marguerite Henry | Little Book, Big Story

That’s the premise of Misty of Chincoteague, and the series just gets better from there. Marguerite Henry fills each book with physical details so vivid you feel you’re running on the sand, in the sea spray with Paul and Maureen. Chinoteague and Assateague Islands are as much characters in the story as the Phantom, or Misty, or the Beebes themselves.

Though I loved the first two books, the third, Stormy, Misty’s Foal, was my favorite. In it, Chincoteague faces a devastating storm. Henry doesn’t skim over the sense of loss and sorrow a storm like that leaves in its wake, but the story itself is hopeful, and as we read it during the first few weeks of quarantine, my daughter and I took comfort in watching the Beebes emerge from such a severe trial unbroken and hopeful.

Misty of Chincoteague (Series), by Marguerite Henry | Little Book, Big Story

I will include one note about the last book, Misty’s Twilight. My daughter enjoyed this one, so I can’t fully toss it out, but the fourth and final book in the series was written thirty years after the others. Most of it isn’t set on Chincoteague (a loss) and doesn’t have a Beebe in it anywhere (a greater loss). The protagonist isn’t a relatable child, but a grown woman whose horses feature more prominently in the story than her kids do.

But the greatest loss, I think, is that rather than setting us on the ground alongside the characters, where we experience things as they do, the narrator of this book hovers somewhere above the characters, so we’re only allowed to watch the characters act out the story without so much as a whiff of salt water for us. For what it’s worth, I think you could stop reading after the third book and not miss a thing.

But the first three books aren’t to be missed. They would make the best sort of summer reading, for you or your kids.


Misty of Chincoteague
Marguerite Henry (1947)

Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague
Marguerite Henry (1949)

Stormy, Misty’s Foal
Marguerite Henry (1963)