Help For Struggling Readers: Dyslexia and Beyond
For several years before I became a parent, I worked part-time in The Literacy Council of Sumner County (LCSC). Like most non-profit organizations, it was cash-strapped, barely-staffed, and run by folks who were absolutely devoted to the cause of helping their neighbor. When I first showed up as a volunteer, I made my way to…
Read MoreNational Poem in My Pocket Day
Yesterday as I was emptying the contents of my husbands’ pockets and my own, preparing our clothes for the Great Machinated Flume Ride that is our washing machine, I found some unusual pocketry. I’m used to finding hairbands and pennies and small toys, but yesterday’s find caused me to pause and reflect. And no, I…
Read MoreThat Hideous Strength 3: Climax
Previous posts: Introduction, Part One: Setup, Part Two: Development. Climax? Isn’t it a little early for that? Most of us have the idea that the climax is a high point of the story (as the word would seem to suggest), after which nothing is left but tying up loose ends. But there’s another way to…
Read MoreBack-to-School Backpack
I’ll admit it. Janie and I like abstract thinking–cultural analysis and big picture type stuff. But occasionally we try to offer practical help for parents and educators. Here are a few of those posts I thought might helpful for kids, parents, and teachers headed back-to-school. RESOURCES 10 Audiobooks for the Whole Family: Originally for…
Read MoreThe Abolition of Man, Part Two
This week, widespread rioting in Britain has blanketed the news, along with commentators asking the eternal question, “Why?” Shaking my head over the pictures of well-dressed kids smashing store windows, I turn from the computer screen and pick up my copy of The Abolition of Man to read this, the first sentence in the second…
Read MoreChrist in Literature: Symbolism (pt. 4)
In my last post of this series, I looked at two ways that the Lord wrote Christ in the Old Testament: historically and symbolically. As for finding Christ historically in literature, it’s fairly simple. It’s Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ or any other historical fiction that treats Christ’s personal works in history. Today,…
Read MoreThat Hideous Strength 2: Development
Previous Posts: Introduction Part One: Setup Almost all the main characters have been introduced and the potential conflicts are in place. Now development: that phase of a novel that builds tension and raises the stakes. All the major plot elements will be rounded up and herded in one direction, although the reader should feel that…
Read MoreThe Abolition of Man, Part One
(Beginning a three-part study intended to accompany our reading of That Hideous Strength this month.) In February of 1943 Lewis delivered three evening lectures at King’s College in Newcastle. Later that year the lectures were published in book form under the title of the third: The Abolition of Man. Over time Lewis came to regard…
Read MoreThat Hideous Strength 1: the Setup
Beginning our first-ever Readalong: here’s the Introduction. The action takes place at three fictional locations: Edgetow, a university town similar to Cambridge, but smaller; St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill, a nearby village; and Belbury, a village in the opposite direction, currently undergoing a process of modernization. Much of it, especially at the beginning, concerns University politics, so it helps…
Read MoreThat Hideous Strength: An Introduction
In the summer of 1945, George Orwell wrote a review for the Manchester Evening News, beginning, “On the whole, novels are better when there are no miracles in them.” That said, he was ready to give a grudging thumbs-up to C. S. Lewis’s latest, which completed the cycle begun with Out of the Silent Planet…
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