This is a "little book." You know what I mean: you take a look, think you can knock this book off by lunch time, and that'll be that.
But, Love in the Little Things is bigger than that. Yes, the reading is quick and easy, but the ideas loom larger than their appearance. Hmmm ... kind of like Jesus of Nazareth ... growing up in a non-descript way, living a quiet family life, full of hidden things beyond this earthly realm, beyond our imagining.
Children who live in the Archdiocese of Chicago know that their Cardinal Archbishop is Francis Cardinal George. But do they know anything at all about his life?
After meeting Cardinal George at a mass at our parish, I was immediately struck by two facts: one--that he was much shorter than I imagined him to be, and two--that he walked with a limp. I was curious about that limp, but never expected to have that particular curiosity satisfied.
Nancy Carpentier Brown’s newest book, The Father Brown Reader: Stories from Chesterton, is an adaptation of four of G.K Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries. It’s a delightful and captivating read-aloud, as well as a perfect book to hand to a young child to read on his own. The four stories – The Blue Cross, The Strange Feet, The Flying Stars, and The Absence of Mr. Glass – are all easy reads, short enough to read in just one sitting.
This is a simply told and heavily illustrated biography of the great William Shakespeare and the theatre in which his plays were first performed. The details of the illustrations and the story are quite nice and even the story of the Globe is more interesting than one might expect. At one point it was disassembled and secretly moved to a new location under cover of darkness.
Have you grown up thinking that Shakespeare is dry literature forced upon high schoolers by antiquated professors? Think again! Even young children can capture an interest in Shakespeare through attractive materials such as this multi-dimensional biography of the bard.
The heart and soul of the book is the story of Shakespeare's life - charmingly enhanced by Shakespearean phrases (followed by modern translations in parenthesis). Numerous photos, sketches and maps give us a peek at Elizabethan life and architecture and a few scenes from renditions of his plays.
This weekend we rented Journey into Amazing Caves (an IMAX film). It's a beautifully filmed documentary that traces a group of scientists' explorations into caves in the Grand Canyon, ice caves in Greenland and underwater caves on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The scientists are searching for "extremophiles" - bacteria and other small creatures that survive extreme conditions and may be useful for medicines.
This is a terrific children's picture books, with lots of details about different parts and features of caves, how caves form and plants and creatures that can live inside of caves. Gail Gibbons has a nice balance of real information that is presented in an easy-to-understand format.
Here's a little sample of the style and content:
"Next, the cavers carefully enter the variable temperature zone. The temperature doesn't change as much here as it does in the twilight zone. Mushrooms, molds, and other fungi grow here. It is dark!"
Nancy Nicholson has just finished High School of Your Dreams – a long-anticipated 200-plus spiral bound pages of information for your high schooler. Nicholson has created a curriculum that’s flexible and fits the needs of different kinds of students. In fact, based on the information and advice in this book, I have decided to build my own high schoolers’ curriculum rather than relying on a canned curriculum!
There is something very elegant about children’s books from the late 1800s and early 1900s – a certain je ne sais quois that imbues the materials with a grace and a polish that is absent from many of today’s books. This elegance is particularly true when looking at textbooks of bygone eras – they are beautiful.
When picking up this book, my first question, since I had never heard of it, was: what is the Marianist Method of Virtues? A footnote in the introduction answered this question. It is inspired by the teaching of Marianist founder, Father William Joseph Chaminade and is proposed not to be an imitation of Christ’s virtues so much as a union with Him through the virtues. The participant works in collaboration with the Holy Spirit and Mary to follow a three-fold plan of growing in virtue: preparation, purification and consummation.