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…
Tag: Rabbit Room
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 Fiddler’s Gun
The thing that this classics-lover continues to most appreciate about Rabbit Room authors is how echoes of the great classics sound in new and vibrant stories from contemporary authors. As a reader, I am so pleased to have new and worthy stories to love. As a Christian living in the modern world, I am grateful…
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. In fact, I am practically jumping out of my skin with excitement as I try to gather my thoughts and explain why Jennifer…
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 Princess and the Goblin
“I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-stories In The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald treats us to a rich imaginative adventure. Like…
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…
The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic
“If the pages that follow are inspiring, enlightening, or life changing, I take full responsibility, but if there are any errors it is not my fault.” – Prologue from The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic “There is a very good possibility that you will not believe a word I say.” Excellent opening words for…
The Angel Knew Papa and the Dog
The angel looked into my eyes in a perfect stillness. A stillness without words and a stillness without questions, but a stillness with more meaning than all words that were ever spoken and all questions that were ever asked. The angel knew me. I knew that. The angel knew Papa and the dog. –…
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….
100 Cupboards: American Magician’s Nephew
“They (the books) are scary, because the world is scary. This is a scary place. If you want to raise weaklings and who fold the first time they meet an obstacle then give them hero stories that never face a real obstacle… (instead) you want to read about people who are actually facing intense challenges…
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…
Wingfeather Saga #3 & #4: Monster in the Hollows & Warden and the Wolf King
-SPOILER FREE- I could not review the third book in the series, Monster in the Hollows, simply because I wasted few minutes between reading it and reading this one. While I have the big picture items clear between the two, the story just flows so much together that I have a hard time separating them…