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A poem, truth, and the month of May
Under the Willows by James Russell Lowell, 1819 – 1891 May is a pious fraud of the almanac, A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind; Or if, o’er-confident,...
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Holiday Gifts You Can Read
Give the gift of delight There’s a lot to be said for gifts you can read. Books provide hours of delight at just pennies per hour, and of course, I have a few suggestions (it was hard to whittle down...
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David and the Phoenix: One of the 1001 Good Books
David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd One of my childhood companions was an old copy of David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd. It was one of the books I turned to whenever I wanted to travel...
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Why Freshmen Fail: A Review
Why Freshmen Fail and How to Avoid It by Carol Reynolds, Ph.D. I picked up Professor Carol‘s new book, Why Freshmen Fail, at the Great Homeschool Convention in Fort Worth, thinking it might be a...
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Choosing Books for Boys
Choosing books for boys isn’t all that hard. Give them adventure — the kind with blood and courage, dirt and ingenuity — and watch their imaginations soar, assuming they haven’t been “Eustaced”* by the...
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When is Reading Hard?
Reading, Comprehension, and Knowledge Do you enjoy reading? I do. I grew up reading voraciously — new books, old books, books set in the city, the country, in foreign lands, and many books that...
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Middle School Reading Lists: What a difference 100 years makes!
I recently came across an interesting comparison of two middle school reading lists. The author, Annie Holmquist, compared a list from 1908 with a current list from the same state on the basis of time...
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Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Art of Historical Fiction
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award was recently renamed the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, a remarkably generic name for such a prestigious award. A lot has been said about the change, and most that I...
View ArticleWhat Grade Are You In? A Bit of Common Sense from Understood Betsy
Summer is winding down in the northern hemisphere and schoolbooks are being dusted off and swimsuits put away. I always enjoyed getting back into an orderly and predictable schedule (as orderly and...
View ArticleThe Lawgivers: A Review of a New Plutarch Translation
Of all Charlotte Mason’s recommendations, I found her advice to read Plutarch with children one of the least appealing. I enjoy old books and love learning, but somehow, it seemed especially daunting...
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