Redeemed Reader Christmas Vacation

This year has been a whirlwind for us, with a record number of book reviews, rising readership, website updates, and two special reading challenges built around Proverbs and Beauty and the Beast.  We’re ready for a vacation!

So we’ll go easy on new posts for the next two weeks, but we’ll still have good reading for you in the meantime.  Check the list below for some of our more popular, meaningful, or relevant posts from our site (and maybe a few from elsewhere).

And we have plans!  Here are some features and programs you can look forward to (Lord willing) in 2018:

• Betsy has a new reading challenge for your family that you won’t want to miss!
• Special focus months—In January, we’ll continue our popular series of posts on Newbery Buzz Titles.  Listen in on our conversations about likely picks, and why they deserve it (or not).
• In February, look for some posts on “Romance Done Right”—worthy reads to shape a young lady’s heart (and a young man’s, too).
• March will be Leadership month: books to inspire teens to do hard things, speak the truth, and stand against falsehood.  Leadership takes many forms, and sometimes it even looks like good “followership”—we’ll round up some fiction and nonfiction along those lines.
• Betsy has a podcast interview lined up with Read-Aloud Revival!  This is BIG—and we’ll let you know when it airs.
• We’re always looking for ways to make RedeemedReader easier to use, browse, and refer back to.  Watch for an indispensable tool to that end, coming in June (or somewhere around there).

Posts in and around RedeemedReader.com:

Be sure to read Betsy’s guest post on Sage Parnassus, Nancy Kelly’s excellent home education blog.  You’ll find some excellent book suggestions.

We just posted this a couple of weeks ago, but it’s worth a trip to the library for a Christmas Eve read: Voices of Christmas by Nikki Grimes.

Over a year ago, Janie began a series of posts traveling through the Gospel of Luke.  Her opening post on the Incarnation explores what it meant for the Word to become flesh.  Did you ever wonder what that was like?  Could Mary feel it?  Did she know when that tiny heart started beating?  Did she know When It Happened?

Are you watching a favorite version of A Christmas Carol this season (or the new and well-reviewed The Man Who Invented Christmas)?  See our “Christmas Carol Watch-Along Guide” to brush up a bit.

Headed to Grandma’s house for the holidays?  For that long road trip, take along a selection of Betsy’s “10 audio books for the whole family” (with more suggestions in the comments!).  And “C.S. Lewis at War” from Focus on the Family is engrossing radio theater for older listeners.

Reading aloud under the tree is even better with this list of “Nostalgic Christmas Picture Books”—and if your library has just acquired a copy of A Christmas for Bear, throw that one in the mix, just for fun.

Finally, instead of the inevitable letdown after December 25, consider extending the celebration with William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.  “Twelfth Night,” in British tradition, observes the Epiphany, or the visit of the Three Wise Men.  Back in the bawdy Elizabethan days it was an excuse for foolishness rather than wisdom, but Shakespeare (as usual), created something profound out of an improbable series of event.  Betsy has an informative post about “Shakespeare’s Christmas Play,” along with suggestions for enjoying it.