Welcome to the April 2025 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!

March was a slow reading month all around in our household. As Lent progresses, I’ve been reading the short reflections in The Little Black Book: Lent 2025 by Bishop Ken Untener. The short book provided to our parish includes both a story or informative section on a saint, Catholic practice, etc., and then a brief passage of John’s Gospel with a reflection. Since I didn’t select any other Lenten reading, this has been a useful resource for me.

Gabriella Batel’s Done is the second book in the Don’t series and picks up three years after the first book (Don’t) left off. Mercedes’s world has shrunk to her mother and baby sister after her father, brother, sister, and friend were murdered. Murderer Luiz is still free, but he regrets what happened three years ago and will work to stop his father, Roman, who wants to take out what’s left of Mercedes’s family. All the imagery and sensory details in these books are well done in this YA drama.

My college senior listened to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, a classic we own but I don’t think any of us had read. Having only been exposed to the popular Disney adaption, my son was impressed by the differences between the book and movie. You likely know the premise: An orphaned boy, Mowgli, is taken in by a wolf pack and befriends a bear and a panther. Shere Khan, a tiger, hates humans and is a danger to Mowgli, so Bagheera (the panther) helps the boy reach human civilization.

Co. Aytch: A Confederate Memoir of Civil War by Sam R. Watkins is the author’s account of his life as a solider in the many Civil War battles he survived. This description summarizes it aptly: “A classic Civil War memoir, Co. Aytch is the work of a natural storyteller who balances the horror of war with an irrepressible sense of humor and a sharp eye for the lighter side of battle. It is a testament to one man’s enduring humanity, courage, and wisdom in the midst of death and destruction.”

Seeking to rectify the lack of C.S. Lewis in his reading diet, my son also read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I grew up never having heard of C.S. Lewis and his books, so while I read a few of the Chronicles of Narnia books aloud to this son when he was a baby, I wasn’t the best advocate for these classic stories at the age he would’ve most appreciated them.

My high school daughter read Leslea Wahl’s In Plain Sight, which I included here last month when her younger sister read it. I don’t often repeat books from month-to-month, but she loved this book, declaring it her favorite of Wahl’s books. She loved the cozy setting amidst the cold of Minnesota in winter, the cast of characters, the secrets rooms and passages in the inn, and the heroine’s dog, Zuri, who reminded her of our own dog.

For Lent, she’s also begun reading the St. Francis de Sales classic Introduction to the Devout Life. She’s only just begun the book, so she doesn’t have many impressions yet, but I found this spiritual classic very practical and helpful when I read it years ago. We have the lovely Our Sunday Visitor hardcover edition, an improvement over my battered, used bookstore copy.

My youngest son, one of my middle schoolers, is reading Gordon Korman’s The Unteachables. A classroom of misfit kids is paired with a burned-out teacher marked by a cheating scandal who’s ready for early retirement. Sounds a little to me like the Bad News Bears in the classroom. Both teachers and students benefit from their time together.

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