Give My Heart Finale: Crafts, Contest Winners, etc.
I had been praying about how to use my creative gifts and last Christmas instead of pulling our decorations out of storage I would try to make some with materials I already had. I grabbed an old hymnal and began cutting….and then moved on to create designs using my favorite books. As an avid reader,…
Read MoreHoliday Book Fair 2011
Janie and I have reviewed a lot of books this year. Thanks to the ingenuity of folks at Amazon.com, we can now offer them to you in an e-bookstore format! Just click on the link below…or “Holiday Book Fair” on the black menu, and you can scroll our top picks from the year all on…
Read MoreWhat Are Your Kids Getting Under the Tree?
Janie has offered lots of kids’ book gift suggestions on the site this week. And I’m hoping to chime in next week, too. For those of you who aren’t done buying gifts, you’ll want to check back next week (maybe Tuesday?) for our Holiday Book Fair….over thirty gift recommendations in one spot! In the meantime,…
Read MoreRecommendations for Teens
As reported by the L.A. Times only a week ago, “Young adult continues to be the literary world’s fastest-growing genre.” There are a lot of reasons for that, some discussed here, but one big reason is that, after fifty or so years of pretentious, plotless literary fiction, adults are lining up for good stories. At…
Read MoreBooks for Emerging Book-Lovers
Picture books are traditional, and YA is new and glamorous, but the area of literature I consider to be “classic children’s” is that big glorious milestone middle—the golden years between, say, eight and twelve, when you were old enough to hop on your bike and seek adventure in the neighboring woods and vacant lots, when…
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Thoughts on A Christmas Carol: Reading and Watching
Charles Dickens, unlike other great authors like Herman Melville, had the good fortune of enjoying widespread fame and popularity during his lifetime. A Christmas Carol appeared on the upswing of his fame, written in six weeks during the autumn of 1843 and published that same year, on December 17. It was an instant classic, not…
Read MoreEreaders and ebooks: An Interview with Mike Sugimoto
Should your family purchase an ereader or ipad? What about your kids–should they be allowed to read book apps or ebooks? Tablets or ereaders are fast becoming a mainstay in American book publishing, but is there any compelling evidence that ereaders or ebooks could be damaging to kids? Earlier in the year, we addressed ereader…
Read MoreBible Gifts for Kids
We’ve written a number of articles about Bibles and Bible-related kids’ books over the past year. Here are a few that might make great Christmas gifts: Emily’s Top Story Bibles for Kids: Includes choices for ages 2-10 such as One Wintry Night by Ruth Graham, The Big Picture Storybible and The Jesus Story Bible. The…
Read MoreA Prayer of Thanks from the “Valley of Vision”
Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions. Drawn from the writings of men like John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, and Charles Spurgeon, The Valley of Vision is a wonderful place to enrich your prayer life (and that of older children!) any time of year. How much more so at Thanksgiving, when we celebrate…
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