Winter Audiobooks (and More) for Kids

By emily | December 22, 2011

Ah, winter…Christmas parties, New Years resolutions, dashing through the snow to Grandma’s house with a minivan full of sugar-crazed kids.  What better time for a family audio book?! Free Audiobooks Swan Lake by Storynory.  Some odd titles and story versions on this site (their Nutcracker doesn’t even include the Land of Sweets, the only part…

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The Word of God for Kids

By emily | December 19, 2011

ESV Seek and Find Bible.  Crossway Bibles, 2010.  1, 888 pps.  Ages 5-up. The Action Bible.  David C. Cook, New edition 2010.  Illustrated by Sergio Cariello.  752 pps.  Ages 9-up. Some of you already know that my mother recently went to be with the Lord.  It was a process that, though excruciating for her and…

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POW! The Comic-Book Surge

By Janie Cheaney | December 16, 2011

  The December 21 opening of The Adventures of Tintin: the Secret of the Unicorn, should focus attention not only on the boy from Belgium but also on the graphic arts medium.  That’s why I’m using this opportunity to introduce Kingstone Media group—but first, a little detour around Tintin. It’s a funny name for a…

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Give My Heart Finale: Crafts, Contest Winners, etc.

By emily | December 15, 2011

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,…

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Holiday Book Fair 2011

By emily | December 13, 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…

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What Are Your Kids Getting Under the Tree?

By emily | December 10, 2011

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,…

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Recommendations for Teens

By Janie Cheaney | December 9, 2011

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…

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Books for Emerging Book-Lovers

By Janie Cheaney | December 8, 2011

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

By Janie Cheaney | December 7, 2011

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…

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Picture Book Roundup

By Janie Cheaney | December 6, 2011

Late last year an article in the New York Times caused the book world to shiver and shake and ask itself, “Is the picture book dead?”  The death of various entities has been proclaimed fairly often but reports are usually exaggerated–the picture book seems to be getting by just fine off life support.  They’re more…

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