Archive | February 2006

Friday’s Center of the Blogosphere

Feb10

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Blaise Pascal

Over at Buried Teasure blog Carmon and the ladies are discussing women and college. To go or not to go, that is the question. I may add my two cents to the discussion in a post here soon. In the meantime, what do you think? Should young ladies go to college? If so, why? If not, why not?

Blest With Sons has turned off the TV; now they’re playing Scrabble–and other games—for school. Visit and find out how valuable games can be to your homeschooling efforts.

Submit your best post on children’s literature to Melissa Wiley at Here in the Bonnie Glen before 6:00 PM tomorrow evening (February 11th) to be included in the Children’s Literature Carnival on Monday.

In the meantime, you can read all about homeschooling at the Sixth Carnival of Homeschooling.

Book-Spotting #3

Feb9

Carrie at Mommy Brain reviews The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan. I thought I had this book on The List; I remember seeing it at Barnes and Noble. Anyway, I’m adding it. I could use a story of courage and perseverance right about now.

Kathryn Judson, bookseller extraordinaire, recommends the out-of-print YA title, To Fight in Silence by Eva-Lis Wuorio. She says it’s set in Denmark during WW II, and it’s about two cousins who join the Danish underground.

Steven Riddle is writing about Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Sulky Girl. He says it’s the second in the series of Perry Mason novels; the first one, The Case of the Velvet Claws isn’t in print, according to Mr. Riddle. I wrote about Gardner here, but Mr. Riddle does a much more thorough review of this particular mystery and and a better introduction to the series.

SFP at pages turned is trying to entice (encourage?) other readers to revisit Moby Dick as she did. No, thanks, once is enough. After reading an entire chapter on “the whiteness of the whale” I remember to this day that the whale is very, very white. But I’m glad someone’s enjoying it. Melville as quoted at pages turned: “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, thought many there be who have tried it. So he chose the Great (Very) White Whale.

Cindy at Dominion Family has an overview of the latest in Christian fiction from a well-known-discounter-of-Christian-books-which-shall-remain-nameless, at least on my blog. The excerpts from someone’s most recent catalog will either make you laugh or cry or both.

Children’s Literature Favorites

Feb8

A meme via Kimbofo at Reading Matters, originally from Shelly’s Book Shelf:

Name your 3 favourite children’s series.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

The Prydain series, starting with The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander.

I really liked the Boxcar Children books when I was a child. The idea of four children living in an old boxcar on their own was intriguing to me. Such independence!

Name your 3 favourite non-series children’s books.

Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott. It does have a sequel, but it’s not a series.

A Ring of Endless Light by Madeline L’Engle Mrs. L’Engle also wrote other books about the characters in this book, but I wouldn’t call it a series either.

Name 3 favourite children’s book characters.

Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables

Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit

Toad of Toad Hall

So what are your favorites?

A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers

Feb8

A Voice in the Wind is the first book in The Mark of the Lion series by Christian author Francine Rivers. It’s a good story. Really, it is. Liz Curtis Higgs says (on the back of the book), “This series is without peer in Christian fiction!” Janet Parshall liked it, too. I enjoyed reading it. I’ll probably read the sequels. I couldn’t write anything half as good. Methinks I doth protest too much.

Let’s start over. A Voice in the Wind is the story of Hadassah, a young Jewish Christian who survives the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. She is taken to Rome as a slave where she becomes the personal servant of the daughter of the house of the patrician family Valerian. Hadassah’s mistress is Julia, a spoiled, willful brat who becomes worse in character as the story progresses. Julia has an older brother Marcus who is as spoiled and pleasure-loving as his baby sister. Only because of the old double standard, Marcus can indulge himself in living selfishly as a libertine with few consequences while Julia is expected to behave herself, do as she is told, and avoid scandal. Hadassah attempts to serve these people as Christ would have her serve them and to witness to the truth of the gospel in her life while keeping her Christian identity a secret. Then, Hadassah, the slave, and Marcus, the Roman master and heir to a fortune, realize that they are falling in love. Not only do their differing stations in life separate them, but Hadassah’s faith and Marcus’ lack of belief in anything make the consummation of their love impossible.

So it’s a good story. It’s not nearly as goopy as I may have made it sound, but there is a problem. I liked the characters in the novel. I want to read more about them. The author did her research and got the details of the time period, how gladiators were trained, how a Roman household was set up, how Christians met together in secret, all the historical setting, all right and well described. Marcus, Julia, Hadassah and the others are all interesting characters, people I want to know more about, but they’re not people of the first century. They’re more like twentieth or twenty-first century people plunked down in an authentic set of first century Rome. Their problems are modern day problems: homosexuality, abortion, materialism, young adult rebellion, lack of respect for tradition, divorce, mystical spirituality, radical feminism. I know, as I said in a picture book review just the other day, that people are much the same the world over and in every time period. But at the same time, they’re not. People in ancient Rome had different thought patterns, dealt differently with different issues than modern Americans. For example, in A Voice in the Wind Marcus, a wealthy Roman citizen, is actually thinking of taking his sister’s slave girl to be his wife, not a concubine or a mistress, but a wife. Would such a thing have occurred to a real Roman? If it did, would his family have put up with the idea for a minute? Julia, Marcus’ sister, has a friend who initiates her into a weird sort of cult of feminist spirituality and empowerment. Again, it sounds more like something from our times than something first century. Hadassah, the Jewish Christian, is really just an American evangelical worried about how to convert her employers to Christianity.

It’s hard to write historical fiction that is true to the time period in which it is set. I couldn’t do it. Writing a novel set in the first century involves thinking like a first century Roman or Jew. If you would enjoy reading a story about modern people with modern problems who happen to be dressed up in Roman togas and attending gladiatorial games and chariot races, A Voice in the Wind is a fine book. As I said, I’ll probably read the sequels. Just don’t expect to find out much about how people in Biblical times thought about their problems and issues. That’s not what this book is about.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born February 8th

Feb8

John Ruskin, b. 1819. Known as a literary and art critic, Ruskin lived a rather tragic life. He was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti, Morris, Meredith, and Swinburne, and his wife left him and married the painter Millais. He fell in love with a young Irish girl, but she would not marry him and she later died. He lost his faith in Christianity, suffered from mental illness, and finally re-embraced the Christian faith of his youth, although he refused to believe in hell. Maybe this rejection had something to do with the fact that during episodes of mental illness he had horrendous visions of himself battling with Satan.

Henry Walter Bates, b. 1825. Naturalist, entomologist, and evolutionist. He wrote The Naturalist on the River Amazons, published in 1863. Has anybody out there read it?
If you’d like to know more about this pioneer in entomology, here’s a good article from The New Yorker, August 22, 1988, about Bates’s life and travels along the Amazon.

Jules Verne, b. 1828. In a letter: “I must be slightly off my head. I get caught up in all the extraordinary adventures of my heroes.”

Digby Mackworth Dolben, b. 1848. English poet, he was rather a character. He wrote love poetry to another (male) student at Eton and then considered conversion to Roman Catholicism and went around wearing a Benedictine monk’s habit. He drowned in a rather mysterious accident at the age of nineteen before he could go up to Oxford.

Kate Chopin, b. 1851. American author of The Awakening.

Martin Buber, b. 1878. Jewish philosopher and teacher. In 1938 he left Germany and went to live in Jerusalem. He wrote the book, I and Thou about the relationships of people to people and persons to God. “Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.”

John Grisham, b. 1955. OK, I’m not really terribly intellectual at all. Of all the authors who have birthdays today, the only two I’ve read are Jules Verne (Around the World in EIghty Days and John Grisham. Which Grisham novel do you like best? Do you agree with me that his novels have not gotten better but rather the opposite? I did enjoy The Firm and The Client and, my favorite, The Rainmaker.

Marge Caldwell, 1914-2006

Feb7

Marge Caldwell, Christian speaker, counselor, and author, died last night, and I’m sure she and the Lord are enjoying a good laugh right now. I didn’t know Mrs. Caldwell personally, but I heard her speak several times when I was a young lady. She loved to laugh and to make people laugh and to witness to the joy that is found in the Lord.

Marge’s books, mostly written for young ladies, are no longer in print, but some are available used from Amazon. It’s a funny coincidence, but I recently heard Beth Moore mention Marge Caldwell in a video Bible study (The Patriarchs) that I’m attending. Beth Moore calls Marge Caldwell her “mentor.” Others have called her an encourager, a Baptist Erma Bombeck, and spiritual mother. I’m sure that the full extent of Marge Caldwell’s influence and legacy will only be known in heaven. My sympathies to her family, especially Thor at Thinklings.

(Marge) Caldwell’s Attention Meant the World to Me, an article from Baptist Messenger

A Houston Chronicle guestbook for Marge Caldwell where you can leave a message of sympathy or a note telling about Marge’s influence on your life.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born February 7th

Feb7

I wrote a post a couple of years ago (my, have I really been doing this blogging thing for that long?) about all the illustrious people born on February 7th: Sir Thomas More, b. 1478, Charles Dickens, b. 1812, Laura Ingalls Wilder, b. 1867, Sinclair Lewis, b. 1885, Henry Clifford Darby, b. 1909.

And last year at this time, I told you about all my favorite Dickensian things.

This year I present a Dickens quiz. Can you match the quotation to the novel?

1. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

2. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

3. “I would rather, I declare, have been a pig-faced lady, than be exposed to such a life as this!”

4. “It’s over and can’t be helped, and that’s one consolation as they always says in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man’s head off.”

5. “If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass–a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience–by experience.”

6. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

7. “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”

Those are from the seven Dickens novels I’ve read. Perhaps you’ve read them. too?

(Doesn’t Shakespeare somewhere call the law “an ass”?)

Picture Book Preschool Book of the Week (6): Obadiah the Bold

Feb6


Obadiah Starbuck is one of my very favorite characters in all of children’s literature. Who could resist a Quaker boy from Nantucket Island whose ambition in life is to become a pirate? Not just any pirate, of course, but rather Obadiah the Bold, Terror of the Seven Seas! However, when Obadiah experiences, in play, some of the more unpleasant aspects of piracy, he decides that maybe it would be braver and better to be an explorer of the seas like his grandfather.

There are so many things to like about this picture book. Obadiah is all boy; he reminds me of Karate Kid in his desire for adventure. Obadiah has a large and loving family. Obadiah is the fourth child of five and the youngest boy in the family. His father is kind and understanding and has time to talk with Obadiah and explain things to him. Obadiah’s family attends Quaker meeting each Lord’s Day. Their faith is taken for granted. The illustrations are exciting and colorful–just like the story.

This story of a typical boy in a normal loving family is set into a culture that is foreign to most of us, that of Quakers on Nantucket Island in the 1700’s. Children learn about cultural differences and about how children everywhere and in every time are much the same. Brinton Turkle wrote three more books about Obadiah and his family: Thy Friend, Obadiah, Obadiah and Rachel, and The Adventures of Obadiah. All four are worth collecting.

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

February: Library Lovers’ Month

Feb4

Let’s do an impromtu librarian and library lovers’ carnival in honor of libraries. I’m no libertarian; I think public libraries are a wonderful application of government and a wonderful example of free public education. I further believe public libraries, where an education is set out free for the taking, could and probably should replace public schools, where children are coerced into learning what the government wants to teach. However, this is not a debate forum. Send me (in the comments or sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom) your links to any post that you’ve written or seen in praise or support of libraries and librarians, and I’ll link them here. I’ll start the ball rolling with a few of my own discoveries:

My favorite librarian bloggers are Camille at Book Moot, a children’s librarian who substitutes in public school libraries, Norma at Collecting My Thoughts, a retired college librarian, and Carmon of Buried Treasure Books who believes in privately-funded, membership libraries. I read all kinds of book-loving, library-loving blogs. Oh, by the way, Norma has a nice blogroll of librarian blogs. And I used to be an elementary school librarian–in another life.

Palm Tree Pundit: In Praise of our Public Library

Mrs. Happy Housewife: Ode to Libraries

Carrie at Mommy Brain says, ‘We love our library!” And she posted a poem to elaborate on the theme.