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….
Author: Diane Pendergraft
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 have been on a brutally restrictive diet since the beginning of December. One of the few things I can tolerate besides chicken stock and vegetables is yogurt
The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane
When I was teaching at a classical Christian school, in a multi-level classroom, we studied the history of the Middle Ages and Renaissance every three years. I always looked forward to the projects related to the preservation of ancient manuscripts and the art of illumination. Some of the now-adult students from my very first class…
Her Father’s Daughter
I wonder if Gene Stratton-Porter’s success went to her head. She was always opinionated, but in Her Father’s Daughter, she reaches her height of preachiness. If it were only that, it wouldn’t be an insurmountable aspect of the story. We put up with a bit of that from other beloved authors. In this book, Stratton-Porter…
Escargot by Dashka Slater
Finding Escargot is another of those happy library accidents. We picked it up because the little snail on the cover is so cute! The happenstance is even happier because Escargot himself is a delightful character. The sad part is that my daughter wouldn’t let me record her reading the book to her kids in…
Beowulf and Boys of Blur
This is part of Diane’s Literature Course II. The reason we read N.D. Wilson’s The Boys of Blur smack in the middle of several ancient literature selections is its relationship to Beowulf, which we read first. Apparently I forgot to mention this to the girls in my literature class. I assigned half the book for…
Anthony and Cleopatra
This is part of Diane’s Literature Course II Series In January this year, I started on a “Read Shakespeare in a Year” plan. I made it until about March, by which time I had learned something about myself. There is a lot of Shakespeare I just don’t enjoy. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate Shakespeare’s genius. I…
Miss Moore Thought Otherwise
I recently started off on a rabbit trail that leads back through prominent librarians of the 20th Century to the first women librarians in America. These women were influential in shaping ideas about the kinds of books that should be written for children. Many of them resorted to writing children’s books themselves. While sorting…
Stick
Stick is another of my serendipitous library finds. The little frog on the first page is so cute I couldn’t resist taking him home. I assumed, from the first page, that the story wasn’t going to be terribly original. We all know this story. The young frog is going to insist on doing things…