Like a great wind after a night of thunder He rocked the sodden marches of the soul And ripped the mists of cowardice asunder With laughter vivid as an aureole. He does not need to knock against the Gate Who every action like a prayer ascended And beat upon the panels. Trumpets, wait For a…
Author: Sara Masarik
Curators of things Good, True, and Beautiful
Roverandom
“In 1925, four-year-old Michael Tolkien lost his beloved toy dog on the beach. To console him, his father, J.R.R. Tolkien, improvised a story about Rover, a real dog who is magically transformed into a toy and is forced to seek out the wizard who wronged him in order to be returned to normal. This charming…
Letters From Father Christmas
You can listen to the podcast version of this book review at the Plumfield Moms on your favorite podcasting app or right here. Several years ago I discovered this beautiful book. Published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien never really meant these for public consumption. Written annually to his children in the guise of Father…
Alvin Fernald: The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald
I have an engineering-type kid. My nine year old has loved all things engineering since he could stack blocks. Trying to feed his imagination with books that explore that interest, I asked friends for recommendations. Some wise friends recommended the Homer Price books by Robert McCloskey and we loved them. Homer is sweet, wholesome, and…
The Quest for Shakespeare
“Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was someone else.” G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy In 2008, Joseph Pearce tackled the daunting task of trying to decode the enigma of Shakespeare’s religious identity. An Englishman by birth, Pearce is acutely aware of how intriguing and important the Shakespeare…
The Importance of Being Earnest
I love stories. While a student at Hillsdale College, I was a theater minor. Between the long hours I logged as Stage Manager and then House Manager, and my appreciation for the art of great storytelling, theater seemed to be a sensible minor to attach to my Philosophy/Religion major. Interestingly, part of why I became…
Little Britches: Shaking the Nickel Bush
“Nobody likes to go back to his hometown dead broke, but I’d made up my mind to do it anyway. That was in St. Joseph, Missouri, and the night before the Fourth of July, in 1919. And that’s why I was lying flat in a ditch in the freight yards, a couple of blocks beyond…
Tolkien: Man and Myth
Two weeks before Christmas in 1984, Joseph Pearce was sentenced to a 12-month imprisonment in London’s Wormwood Scrubs prison. This was his second prison sentence for publishing material that was designed to stir up racial unrest. In his autobiography, Pearce explains that at that time he was a white supremacist steeped in radical hatred. “The…
Helena
On September 29, 1930, Evelyn Waugh, the author of Vile Bodies and other ultra-post-modern works, entered the Catholic Church. Three weeks later, the Daily Express published an essay by the convert entitled “Converted to Rome: Why It Has Happened.” In that essay, Waugh explained his choice to submit to ultra-orthodoxy in an age which desperately…
Happy Times in Noisy Village
In another post, I commented that my first exposure to Astrid Lindgren was through Pippi Longstocking and I wasn’t terribly impressed. Along the way, however, I was persuaded to try some of her other work. I read Children of Noisy Village and fell in love. In my review of that book, I note a Santa…
Old Sam Dakota Trotter
“It was this way with many things, for there was no sure guide to go by. It was the beginning of experience. Of course no two settlers were working under the same conditions, and their methods differed… as they learned to overcome their own difficulties in their own way, uncertainty gave way to a good…
Mrs. Mike
When trying to decide how to describe Mrs. Mike, I thought that the word poignant was accurate and helpful.
Right Ho, Jeeves
“The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh is tasteless, irreverent, perverse, and merciless. These qualities, however, are the source of a strange sanity because they are the means by which we can all have a good laugh. Not only is it quite alright to take things lightly, it is a good habit… We are refreshed more…
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
No talent is wholly wasted unless its owner chooses to hide it in a napkin. In 1868, Louisa May Alcott published her most famous novel, Little Women, featuring four sisters and their varied experiences of growing into womanhood. The next year she published another beautiful story of the same ilk. An Old Fashioned Girl seemed…
The Princess Bride
In 1973 William Goldman penned a quirky but endearing story about a beautiful princess, a mysterious pirate, a lovable giant, a Spanish swordsman, a cunning Sicilian, a six-fingered villain, a duplicitous prince, and an out-of-work miracle man. Perhaps a little bit like A.A. Milne’s Once On A Time, The Princess Bride is tough to categorize…