Anne of Green Gables is pretty nearly a perfect book. Even if you don’t love the story or the character, it is hard deny that Anne Shirley…
Tag: Sequels and Series
The Chronicles of Prydain #1: The Book of Three
Almost a decade ago, friends were raving about Lloyd Alexander and The Chronicles of Prydain. At that time, I had a newborn baby and didn’t have enough headspace to investigate their recommendation, but for some reason, I never forgot how much they loved the books. A few years ago, I was studying the Mensa reading…
Emily’s Quest
It seems that even in the 1920s there must have been some demand for trilogies. As much as I love Emily herself, I think Montgomery might have done better to have resolved all the love affairs in a longer second book. In this book we see Emily grow into an admirable, caring woman intent on…
Emily Climbs
In this sequel to Emily of New Moon, Emily is 14 years old and has successfully graduated from the local country school. In order for Emily to go on to high school, she has to board in town with nasty, suspicious Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth is a trial to Emily because if she doesn’t understand…
Billy and Blaze
I have a cowboy kid. You know, a little guy who loves horses, dreams of living on a cattle ranch, and who believes that the wild untamed West is still out there, waiting for him to put on his boots and spurs so he can saddle up to that special kind of man’s work. I…
All of a Kind Family
I didn’t read Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family until I was homeschooling my children. My first thought was, “Why didn’t I know about this sweet story when I was a child?” The first book in the series was published in 1951. June Cummins, who wrote the foreward for a 2014 edition of More All-of-a-Kind Family, says…
Emily of New Moon
Besides loving L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables because it’s a great story with a timelessly loveable heroine, it is special to me because it is one of the few books my mom introduced me to that she had loved when she was young. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon is special to me because…
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…
Cobble Street Cousins
In this review I lamented that it was a shame that Cynthia Rylant did not restrict her Mr. Putter and Tabby book series to three or six well-crafted stories. I am so glad to be able to tell you that that is exactly what she did with this series. Perhaps because of her restraint, this…
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…
Mr. Putter and Tabby
With 25 books in the series, Cynthia Rylant’s “Mr. Putter and Tabby” books range from sweet and endearing to naughty and questionable. I think that the series can best be understood by reading a sample of just two or three particular examples. The inaugural book, Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea, is one of…
Why I don’t like Phyllis Naylor’s Dog Book, Shiloh
I am not a fan of surprises. I especially don’t care for surprises in my children’s reading. I take the sacred vocation of being my child’s first and foremost teacher very seriously and I am extremely careful about what kind of intellectual and emotional foods I am giving them to eat. As a lover of…
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,…
Betsy-Tacy Books
I am a Wisconsin girl. Even though most Wisconsin children grew up reading Wisconsin based Caddie Woodlawn, I grew up reading the Betsy Tacy books because my mom was raised on the Western side of the state which borders Minnesota. Maud Hart Lovelace is one of the great authors to come out of Minnesota in…
The Mad Scientists’ Club
I dislike the inherent disrespect towards adults and some of the themes in these stories. And yet, I think that the Mad Scientists’ Club has some unique…