The Green Ember Book Club

This week, I hosted a The Green Ember book club at Cathedral Book and Gift for 30 readers aged 7-15. It was one of the most fun book clubs we have had to date. Of all of the books that we have read together, this one, The Hobbit, and Jonathan Roger’s Wilderking books have inspired the most…

Leepike Ridge

“What poetry does is represent nature.  That can be handy because nature is big and changing and various and hard to look at.  Whereas with somebody with a great eye and a big soul, they could explain it to you.” I heard Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, say this in a lecture shortly…

The Wilderking Trilogy

This spring my family fell in love with The Wilderking trilogy. Much like Narnia or the Shire, the Wilderking books are set in a place that feels romantic and a bit heaven-kissed. Corenwald is a place of physical beauty, vibrant community, traditional values, exotic intrigue, relative peace, and the possibility of high adventure. The fictional…

The Bark of the Bog Owl

This review is of the first book of the trilogy. If you wish to read our review of the whole trilogy, click here. “‘Who knows what the future holds? Only the One God,’ explained Aidan. ‘You live the little bit of life that you can see in front of you. You live it well. And…

Henry and the Chalk Dragon

“He looked at his armor, then back at the door. This was a morning that needed a knight.” I love this book. Really, truly, and sincerely love Henry and the Chalk Dragon.  I love this book because it is delightful. It is funny. It is tender. It is oh so wholesome. It is really real….

The Wishes of the Fish King

In May of 2016, author Doug McKelvey and illustrator Jamin Still collaborated on a Kickstarter project to fund the creation of a gorgeous new picture book. The Wishes of the Fish King is a story that Doug wrote when his first daughter was two years old. At the time, they lived in a house on…

The Terrible Speed of Mercy

Just over a year ago my Facebook book club decided that we wanted to harness some of the fun we saw in books like 84 Charing Cross Road and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We developed a pen pal group and started exchanging letters with book friends all over the world. As…

Outlaws of Time

Outlaws of Time is Louis L’Amour’s Lonesome Gods meets Doctor Who told through the voice of a modern Flannery O’Connor for boys – set in the sticky Arizona desert. And just to make it a little more of a tilt-a-whirl, reminiscent of Doctor Who and Flannery O’Connor,  every name and every symbol has layered meaning….

Wingfeather Saga #2: North! Or Be Eaten!

-SPOILER FREE- When CS Lewis wrote Narnia, he wasn’t really writing fantasy – he was playing with “dressed rabbits” – a style of anthropomorphizing pastoral animals and mythic creatures (like centaurs) so as to give the story a magical setting. Basically, however, the creatures all followed rules that were fairly basic to regular humans and…

The Black Star of Kingston

I am going to venture to guess that G.K. Chesterton would have liked this book. Not because it is the most sophisticated book. Not because it is the most elegantly written book. Not even that it is the best book of S.D. Smith’s Green Ember books. I think that Chesterton and his wife Frances would have loved…