Liz Rosenberg When I read fiction, I like to know a bit about the author, just to have an idea of his or her perspective. Often, the blurb on the book jacket is enough for context. I’m not typically one who needs or wants all the intimate details of an author’s life, though it can…
Author: Diane Pendergraft
The Candy Bomber
Michael O. Tunnel Our children need stories like this. We need stories like this. The first chapter of The Candy Bomber briefly outlines a complicated political situation – the Soviet blockade of Germany’s capital city, Berlin, in 1948. When WWII was over, the Allies divided Germany into four occupation zones. The city of Berlin was…
The Sailor Who Captured the Sea
by Deborah Nourse Lattimore In a couple of other reviews of books I’ve used for introducing children to the topic of ancient manuscripts, I listed The Sailor Who Captured the Sea as a beautiful illustration resource. It is truly lovely. In her prologue, Deborah Nourse Lattimore briefly describes the Book of Kells. As is fitting…
Invincible Louisa
“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…
One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
Monday Morning School was the perfect excuse to read One Hudred and One 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…
Ox, House, Stick: The History of our Alphabet
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…
Marguerite Makes a Book
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…
Left by Themselves by Charles Paul May
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….
Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West By Marguerite Henry
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…
Till We Have Faces By C.S. Lewis
This is part of Diane’s Literature Course II 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 to…
Brother Hugo and the Bear
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…
Across a Dark and Wild Sea
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…
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
This is part of Diane’s Literature Course II 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. This…
Rascal Study Guide
Near the end of Sterling North’s Rascal, Sterling and his aunt Lillie discuss what Sterling might want to be when he grows up. Aunt Lillie thinks Sterling’s deceased mother would have wanted him to be a writer. When he asks why, she says; “And then you could put it all down, the way it is…
Homemade Yogurt
I’m sure I can’t expect everyone to be as excited about this recipe as I am. Many of you probably already do this with a yogurt maker, or some other method, and know more about the process than I. But I want to share because I’m thrilled to find this so simple. I have been…