Author: Diane Pendergraft

“Excited and delighted by her first success [a play called “Duke Roderigo”], Louisa worked away in the little room, writing more and more dramas of the same sort. So many plots came crowding to her brain that from plays she overflowed into stories of the same grandiloquent sort. They were cut out, as the boots … Continue reading Invincible Louisa

Monday Morning School was the perfect excuse to read 101 Dalmatians again. Though the story-line was fuzzy in my memory, not so the nostalgia for the days home alone, missing school because of a cold; couch, blanket, box of Kleenex, reading and rereading this sweet tale. Because the feeling of reading this one stuck with … Continue reading 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

By Don Robb Illustrated by AnneSmith I have plenty of books in my library on the history of the English language, most of which include bits of history about the alphabet. But, when I wanted to use a different approach with my spelling students, I decided to take them as far back as possible into … Continue reading Ox, House, Stick: The History of our Alphabet

by Bruce Robertson Once again I get to teach a group of children something of the history of ancient manuscripts and the art of illumination. In my review of The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane, I noted that my favorite resource for the subject is Marguerite Makes a Book. Robertson’s story outlines the process of … Continue reading Marguerite Makes a Book

Charles Paul May seems to have written a dozen or so informational books for children in the 1960s and 70s, but not even Wikipedia knows anything about him now. Left by Themselves was originally titled Stranger in the Storm. In this book, May is still teaching, but by means of a short work of fiction. … Continue reading Left by Themselves by Charles Paul May

By the time the Marguerite Henry craze visited my grade school classmates in the early 70s, Henry had already published around 50 books about dogs and horses. Given my love of animal stories at the time, I’ve pondered my reasons for never joining my friends on the “Henry-Reading Train.” In fact, I didn’t read Misty … Continue reading Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West By Marguerite Henry

This is part of Diane’s Literature For the Ages Series My girls and I did manage to fit Till We Have Faces into our school year. Well, I insisted. I think they came away from it with a better understanding than I did the first time I read it, when I was about 19. I remember getting … Continue reading Till We Have Faces By C.S. Lewis

I found inspiration for the figure of Brother Hugo himself in an Oxford manuscript. At the end of an eleventh-century copy of St. Jerome’s Commentary of Isaiah, now kept in the Bodleian Library, I came across the endearing self-portrait of a Benedictine monk who had labeled his picture Hugo pictor: “the painter Hugo.” Beebe built … Continue reading Brother Hugo and the Bear

In my review of The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane, I linked two books the author lists as further resources. One of them I hadn’t read was Across a Dark and Wild Sea by Don Brown. I have read it now. This is the story of Columcille (koll-m-kill), an Irish monk who lived in the … Continue reading Across a Dark and Wild Sea

This is part of Diane’s Literature For the Ages Series Each of the girls in my class has read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and last year we read Life on the Mississippi together. So they have had a good taste of Mark Twain’s usual style. This month we read Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. … Continue reading Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc