In The Enchanted Hour, Meghan Cox Gurdon makes the intellectual, social, and emotional case for reading aloud, at any age, to any age. The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction by Meghan Cox Gurdon.  Harper, 2019, 261 pages Does anyone need convincing that it’s important to read aloud to toddlers and preschoolers—even babies?  The concensus is pretty clear on that one, even among parents who don’t do it.  Study after study has shown that there’s nothing like curling up with a kid and a book for improving language skills, literary appreciation, and simple cuddle time.  The Enchanted Hour goes beyond those basic virtues…

A beleaguered planet, flight school, and one young woman’s quest to prove herself and clear her family honor combine in this excellent YA. Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. Delacorte Press, 2018, 528 pages. Ever since her late father was branded a coward, Spensa has dreamed of becoming a pilot and reclaiming her family’s honor. The motto of her cave-dwelling people is Defiant and it suits Spensa to a T. Someday she will fly, just like her father, and defeat the alien Krell who threaten her planet. As Spensa nears the age of determining her career, she realizes the odds against her are overwhelming. When an unexpected ally helps her join flight school as a cadet,…

How do you practice creativity, having been made in the image of God? What talents do you have in your hand? I have aspired to be a writer since the day I typed my first story in all caps on my mother’s typewriter. I was eight years old. I consumed fairy tales and wrote stories and poems all through high school. I attended every writing workshop taught by local authors in our public library, and tried submitting manuscripts for publication. I labored over literary fiction, a cumulative tale, and narrative poetry in graduate school…then married my best friend and traded writing aspirations for motherhood. Authorial ambitions were abandoned. Motherhood is…

Ladies, are you enjoying your chosen books for our Faith, Fiction, & Fellowship read-along? Faith, Fiction, & Fellowship Discussion, Week 1 If you’ve purchased the official reading guide, you’ll have plenty of questions to help you think about the themes and connections in the books. But to help get the conversation going, here are a couple of week one’s questions that work for any of the books. (Feel free to answer in the comment section! We’re also going to dive into these in the Facebook group for the read-along.) Question 1: Which characters in your book are struggling with physical needs? Does anyone in the book reach out to them, offering…

John Hendrix grew up in St. Louis, left home to advance his art career, and eventually returned.  Along the way he spent some time as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer for the New York Times, but returning home also gave him a chance to expand his first love into his current niche as an illustrator. His books have popped up on our radar several times, most notably with the recent, much-awarded The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler.  Earlier, we gave Miracle Man: the Story of Jesus a starred review.  At the time it seemed very unusual for a secular publisher to include an unabashedly Christian…