This is part of Diane’s Literature Course I Series This summer, about six weeks before school was going to start, I was asked to teach a literature class for a small group of teen girls. “Literature” is a dauntingly broad subject. Where to focus? Based on what some of the students had already read, I decided…
Tag: Historical Fiction
Cicero’s On Duties
“Cicero, like thoughtful men of every age, knew that the reason vicious leaders like Caesar could rise to power was because the Roman population itself had been corrupted and no longer pursued the old virtues; a leader is, after all, a mirror of the people who choose him or at least allow him to retain…
A Tree for Peter
“…Some of you have steady jobs now. Most of you work off and on…there is not one among you who is not a man after me own heart. Kicked around by life you were, sure. Only, I am the cop on the beat and I know that there is not one among you who has…
Grandma’s Attic Series
Several years ago this book started popping up in my Amazon recommendations because I was buying Caddie Woodlawn, Understood Betsy, What Katy Did, and Betsy-Tacy for my little girl. The cover art, however, was so off-putting to me that I resisted any inclination to even consider the book. I thought, for sure, that this book was…
Signature: The Story of Clara Barton
Published by Grosset and Dunlap, the Signature “Story of” books are a biography series very similar to the famous Landmark and North Star children’s biography series. Like those series, the publishers at Grosset and Dunlap commissioned excellent authors to write biographies that would be appropriate for children. After having read several books in each series,…
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The movie is better. Much better, in fact. In 1903, Baroness Orczy wrote a successful stage play about a foppish English noble who mastered the art of “disguise and redirect” in order to save the lives of French royals destined for the Madame Guillotine during the Reign of Terror. Building on the success of The…
Little Britches #5: Fields of Home
In my review of the fourth book in Ralph Moody’s Little Britches series, Mary Emma and Company, I said goodbye to young Ralph. That book closed the chapter on Ralph’s childhood. Fields of Home chronicles Ralph’s debut into young manhood. No longer a child but not yet a man, this chapter of Ralph’s life extends…
The First Olympics
In June of 1894, Pierre de Coubertin and his newly organized International Olympic Committee unanimously voted to schedule the first Olympics of the modern era to open in April of 1896 in Athens, Greece. Over the next two years, 13 countries would assemble teams of athletes to represent their nation in this peaceful international assembly…
Little Britches #3: The Home Ranch
This article is going to be shorter than the others in the Little Britches series because this book is pretty unique for the series. Near the end of Man of the Family, we learned that Ralph spent his last summer in Colorado working for Mr. Batchlet. That summer proved to be a very important season in…
Seabiscuit, Family Friendly
“Separately they were nothing more than a failing jockey and a broken down horse. Together they would become the hard luck heroes for a troubled nation.” – Seabiscuit PBS Documentary In 1938, America was hurting. Not only was the nation poor, scared, hungry, and gearing up for war, but it was also broken. The Great…
Little Britches #2: Man of the Family
When Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers closes, we are left with an overwhelming sense of grief. It is near to impossible not to love Charles Moody and the ethic that he instilled in his family. Understandably, Ralph chooses to focus his first memoir on the father who was so crucial to his moral…
The Red Falcons of Tremoine
The Red Falcons of Tremoine by Hendry Peart opens in the middle of a complex story. It took this reader more than a few pages to feel at home in the text, partly because it felt as though I had walked into the middle of a conversation, and because I was met with a lot…
Philomena
Reading aloud is hard. It is work, it requires focus, it demands stamina, and it usually requires good habits. Reading aloud, like almost anything truly valuable, is hard to do. Over the years, I have heard great mentors give the same piece of advice: choose a book you love. Reading aloud can be much easier…
The Hedge School
The Hedge School by Gloria Whelan is a gripping middle-grade tale of faith, family, and secret education under Ireland’s Penal Laws in the 18th century.