“The Creator of all, the source of all power and wisdom, has one great desire: to be called Father. You share that name with God.” I do not think there is a greater cheerleader for dads today than Dr. Meg Meeker. This book is friendly, practical, encouraging, and inspired. I think that every dad could…
Author: Sara Masarik
Curators of things Good, True, and Beautiful
David and the Phoenix
“You never know what you will find when you climb a mountain…” While he was a student at Berkeley in the 1940s, Edward Ormondroyd had a vision of a “large pompous bird diving out of a window, tripping on the sill, and crashing into a rose arbor below” (from the author’s letter in the Purple…
The Water Horse
“Writing my books is like handing out presents. Giving children pleasure gives you a wonderful sort of Father Christmassy feeling.” – Dick King-Smith, October 1995 Dick King-Smith was a gift to children. A beloved English children’s author, King-Smith grew up in a sort of well-to-do existence. His family owned a quality paper company and King-Smith…
Handle With Care
A couple of years ago someone gifted this oversized hardbound picture book to my science loving kids. We read it immediately and loved it. This spring, my ten year old was searching for science books to read during his daily quiet hour. When he pulled this one out of our biology bucket, we all enjoyed…
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…
Papa Gatto
Ruth Sanderson is one of my favorite illustrators and children’s storytellers. Her art is classical and magical; her storytelling is traditional and grounded in folk tales. After falling in love with her work in the two Saints: Lives and Illuminations books, I started to request everything else she had from my library. Her Twelve Dancing Princesses is…
Book Club Start
We love book clubs here at Plumfield and talk about them everywhere – on the site, on social media, and on the podcast. We often get a lot of feedback from listeners and readers that for many people finding a setting up a small book club or finding a reading buddy (from among strangers) is…
Pillaging Anne
Stop pillaging Anne. For the love of Lucy Maud Montgomery, please just stop. In the last week I have been called a pearl-clutcher (laughable if you know me), closed-minded, small-minded, an ostrich, and a fear-monger. I guess my post on The Handmaid’s Tale hit a nerve. Mercifully, I knew what I was getting into when I…
Something like Tolkien’s Leaf Mould
This spring Diane, Jennifer Halverson and I re-read one of my top ten favorite books: Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. A funny thing happened in this reading that I was not expecting. As a child, I feasted on the 1982 made-for-t.v. Ivanhoe movie featuring Anthony Andrews, James Mason, Olivia Hussey, and John Rhys-Davies. When I say…
Ears to Hear
In our book club, we delight in talking through the different ways we read. The question “do audiobooks count?” comes up frequently. Yes. Audiobooks count. You don’t have to take my word for it, a quick internet search will yield a lot of articles like this one at Forbes detailing the science and studies which…
The Awakening of Miss Prim
I feel almost silly trying to write a review of The Awakening of Miss Prim by Madrid writer Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera when Joseph Pearce’s piece in The Imaginative Conservative is light years better than anything I would write. Please understand that my attempt here is not to match his eloquent review. Instead, I hope…
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…
Why I Won’t Read “The Handmaid’s Tale”
(If you prefer to hear this essay rather than read it, click here to find the spoken tract version of this reflection.) I won’t read The Handmaid’s Tale. And it isn’t because I am a Christian who is afraid of being confronted by ideas that are unsettling. I graduated from Hillsdale College in the very late…
Books Boys Love
Moms often ask us for book recommendations for their 8-12 year old sons. This particular gender and age reader combination can be challenging for many families. Even if the boys are reading independently, many do not just dive into novels the way that girls seem to. Keeping in mind that boys tend to love “real” things,…
Our Favorite Books for Bedrest
Recommendations that would be light and wholesome reading for those times when we are tired, hurting, nursing, on bedrest, or just in need of a little retreat.