Books of interest, reading, reviews, articles, and more.
Choosing books for boys isn’t all that hard. Give them adventure — the kind with blood and courage, dirt and ingenuity — and watch their imaginations soar, assuming they haven’t been “Eustaced”* by the sort of twaddle mentioned in Martin...
Why Freshmen Fail and How to Avoid It by Carol Reynolds, Ph.D. I picked up Professor Carol‘s new book, Why Freshmen Fail, at the Great Homeschool Convention in Fort Worth, thinking it might be a resource I could recommend to...
David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd One of my childhood companions was an old copy of David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd. It was one of the books I turned to whenever I wanted to travel the fairie realms, and...
Give the gift of delight There’s a lot to be said for gifts you can read. Books provide hours of delight at just pennies per hour, and of course, I have a few suggestions (it was hard to whittle down the list!)....
Under the Willows by James Russell Lowell, 1819 – 1891 May is a pious fraud of the almanac, A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind; Or if, o’er-confident, she trust the date, And, with her...
I was poking around in my mother’s bookshelf this past summer, and I found a treasure — our Aunt Edie’s handmade commonplace book. It’s not a very big book, and after many years of love, is a bit faded and...
Why spend time reading? Just in case you need an excuse to read to your children (or just to read for yourself), the infographic below outlines a host of benefits of reading. Although there are many practical reasons to read...
I like old books (Who am I kidding? Some of my best friends are old books!), so if I come upon one that’s irresistibly priced, I’ll take a second look, even if the cover looks a bit shabby. Like this...
William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (1770-1850), an English poet, was born at Cockermouth, on the Derwent, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April 1770. Wordsworth’s family and childhood He was the son of John Wordsworth (1741-1783), an attorney, law agent to … Continue reading
As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad … Continue reading
In Hilaire Belloc’s humorous book of More Beasts (for Worse Children), a companion volume to The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, you will find poetic descriptions of real and imaginary beasts. Many like “The Vulture” offer a tongue-in-cheek moral. The … Continue reading
A Letter to Students Why We Read The Odyssey Tuesday, March 9, 2010 By Deborah Stokol I’ve been full-time substitute teaching English at Harvard-Westlake, my Alma mater, for six weeks now, lecturing on The Odyssey and covering Creative Writing. A … Continue reading
Sarah Orne Jewett Sarah Orne Jewett (1840-1909) was an American author born in South Berwick, Maine, on the 3rd of September 1849. She was a daughter of the physician Theodore H. Jewett (1815-1878), by whom she was greatly influenced, and … Continue reading
