I haven’t published many personal posts here in a while, so I thought I’d share something I recently wrote for Catholic Mom. Lying down with my little ones, who aren’t all so little any more, has been a great blessing – for them and for me.
So-called “nighttime parenting” gets a bad rap. I can safely say that, now that all of my children regularly sleep through the night. (My children were each at least four years old before that happened with any regularity.)
Sleep disruption, for all its annoyance and the growing bags under my eyes, is the foundation of many warm memories of snuggling a newborn at my breast, rubbing the back of a toddler awakened by a nightmare, and reading picture books to a preschooler who can’t fall back to sleep.
Some of the most honest, intimate moments I’ve shared with my children have come in nearly dark bedrooms while they lay tucked beneath the sheets, a stuffed companion or two (or more) at their side.
Welcome to the February 2022 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!
While lately I’ve been finishing other books I’ve been reading, I did begin Saintly Moms: 25 Stories of Holiness by Kelly Ann Guest. This collection of stories of mom saints has a lot of variety, spanning all Christian history and mixing well-known and little-known saints. I was happy to see one of my patrons, Saint Perpetua, included. The stories, with reflections, are brief enough to enjoy when you have only a short time to read and make the book easy to pick up and return to. This book also checks the first box (Saintly) on the 2022 Catholic Writers Guild Reading Challenge.
I’ve been seeing Emma St. Clair’s clean, contemporary rom-coms and their illustrated covers all over the place lately and thought I’d give one a try. The Love Clichés series covers six familiar romance tropes. Falling For Your Best Friend is the fifth book in the series, but I had no trouble keeping characters straight. I found the first half of the book disappointing and almost set it aside a third of the way through, but the second half was much more to my liking. The most striking thing about the story is the main character, Harper, and the realization that her quirks likely place her on the autism spectrum. The hero, Chase, is as solid and selfless as they come, and the author creates some nice chemistry between him and Harper.
My daughter’s middle school class is reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis together. I’m sad to say I wasn’t introduced to this Christian allegory until well into adulthood. I’ve read several books in the series to my oldest son, but never the series in its entirety. I did see the movies, so there’s that. For my daughter, it’s a chance to revisit a book she read when she was small.
Where You Lead by Leslea Wahl is the book my daughter is picking up for fun, working to get in a few chapters during her especially busy days. She’s already told me that the main character, Eve, has two ’50s-style skirts – even a poodle skirt, I think – and she wants some of her own. Where You Lead is a fun contemporary mystery with some romance and history included as well. It’s a great choice for teen girls.
My fourth-grade daughter read Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Desperaux, the story of a mouse who loves a princess named Pea. (Again, I think I saw the movie. Some time I’ll have to address the dearth of good literature in my childhood.) She said it was a fun adventure, the characters were great, and she loved the details the author used.
My daughter also re-read Karey Kelly Boyce’s Sisters of the Last StrawCase of the Campground Creature aloud to me since I hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. She loves this series, and I enjoyed a few laugh-out-loud moments in this tale of the sisters discovering the identity of a Bigfoot-like creature roaming the campground where they are staying.
My youngest son read The Wild Robot by Peter Brown with his third-grade class. I hadn’t heard of this novel, which the blurb describes as a blend of Wall-E and Hatchet. Roz, a robot trying to survive on a remote island, befriends the native animals until her “mysterious past comes back to haunt her.” Sounds ominous.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, also by Kate DiCamillo, is the second book he read last month. This one features a rabbit, Edward Tulane, not a mouse. Edward is owned by Abilene, who adores him. But then Edward is lost. Some reviews characterize the story as too sad and filled with too much loss. My son, however, didn’t find it particularly sad.
Finally, I’ve spotted my youngest reading Dog Man by Dav Pilkey. The illustrations are so easily recognizable that my husband though he was reading Captain Underpants (another Pilkey series), which I don’t think any of my kids have read. In Dog Man, George is a human with a dog’s head. And he’s also a cop. Apparently, there are plenty of poop jokes. [As an aside, I noticed this book has more than 15,000 Amazon reviews. Margaret Mitchell’s classic Gone with the Wind has less than 9,000. The long arm of the Scholastic Book Fair reaches pretty far, I guess.]
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I don’t typically share individual book reviews unless they are part of a virtual book tour/blog tour. But Things Worth Dying For, more than anything I’ve read in recent memory, was the right book at the right moment.
Things worth dying for and its flips side, things worth living for, are what it’s all about. Over the past couple of years, those things have crystallized for me. Not that my beliefs have changed, but in a messy world, painted in blacks, whites, and shades of gray, the contrast between the darkness and the light have appeared, to me at least, more stark.
Up for a challenge? The Catholic Writers Guild invites you to participate in its 2022 Reading Challenge. Read as many or as few books as you like in this challenge designed to have you reading Catholic books, fiction or nonfiction, in a way that expands your reading horizons without having you search for arcane titles on dusty old shelves. (Though dusting off some of the books in your personal library may be a good idea!)
Welcome to the January 2022 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!
My husband stumbled across a book I’d given him last year: Christmas Around the Fire: Stories, Essays, & Poems for the Season of Christ’s Birth by Ryan N. S. Topping. In fact, he read a selected story aloud to me—as it’s meant to be!—sitting alongside a cozy fireplace, and it was like something out of a storybook. There’s something about being read to, and, as an adult, I’ve experienced entirely too little of it. (I’m used to being the reader.) This book could help create some lovely family traditions.
I read fewer Christmas books than I’d have liked this year, but one of those I did complete was Mr. Nicholas: A Magical Christmas Tale by Christopher de Vinck. The “Christmas magic” accompanies Mr. Nicholas, as you might easily guess, but the story centers on a couple at the brink of divorce and their wonderfully simple son, who has Down syndrome. Mister Rogers Neighborhood serves as a touchstone in the story, which touched this fan of the show and western Pennsylvania native.
My daughter and I resumed listening to audiobooks together, something we haven’t really done since before the pandemic. We chose Pepper Basham’s The Mistletoe Countess, which I’ve seen so many glowing reviews for. We’re less than halfway through, but it’s easy to see why readers love this forthright, authentic, and bookish heroine. This young turn-of-the-century Virginian is paired with an English lord, and there’s a murder mystery to be solved at his beloved Havensbrook Hall.
Jennifer Rodewald has reached the last brother in her Murphy Brothers Stories with Brayden in After All. Having seen what the author has done in the other stories, aptly demonstrating the power of God to change hearts and lives, it’s not hard to accept what is a somewhat difficult story in which Brayden’s motivations and behavior sometimes made me cringe. Don’t worry, it turns out well! And, I think despite running out of brothers, there’s another connected book coming in 2022.
Let It Be Me is Becky Wade’s second book in her Misty River Romance series. Her stories are easy to sail through with smooth writing and witty banter. This book pairs a genius mathematician who discovers she was switched at birth and a closed-off pediatric heart surgeon (oh, the irony). There’s a mystery to solve regarding the circumstances of Leah, the mathematician’s, birth. I’m enjoying the story although I’m having trouble connecting with the main characters, something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced with a Becky Wade book.
My oldest son is home from college and is reading his way through his dad’s Star Wars books that he discovered in the attic over Thanksgiving break. He’s a fan of these now non-canon books and how they portray Luke Skywalker (as opposed to how the character is rendered in the final big screen trilogy). Both Heir to the Empire and Dark Force Rising are part of The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn.
We gave our teen daughter a beautiful hard cover edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë for Christmas. We recently watched a movie adaption, and she was primed and ready to read the classic. I purchased the book, and even I didn’t realize what a keepsake it would be. Not only does it include lovely illustrations by Marjolein Bastin, but it includes treasures like a copy of Bronte’s letter to her publisher, a postcard with period fashions, an advertisement akin to what Jane placed seeking a governess position, and more. I hope my daughter enjoys the Gothic romance of a courageous, principled orphan who finds love (and a wee bit of horror) at Thornfield Hall with Edward Rochester.
Having completed Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (again), my eighth grader also chose to begin Great Expectations. Thus far, she’s taken by the size of the volume and Dickens’s propensity for lengthy descriptions. I’ve not yet read this classic, which follows orphan Pip Pirrip’s life after he receives a mysterious inheritance.
My younger daughter received Coding Games in Scratch: A Step-by-Step Visual Guide to Building Your Own Computer Gamesby Jon Woodcockfrom her older brother. She enjoys simple programming apps she uses in the STREAM lab at school, and he thought she’d take to more coding. It teaches problem solving and all that, but mostly, I think, it’s just fun. (And her brother, who’s doing college-level programming now, is happy to spur her interest in something he enjoys.)
This fourth grader has also been busy snatching paper from the printer to draw all sorts of shapes and characters, so we gave her How to Draw Cool Stuff: Holidays, Seasons and Events by Catherine V. Holmes. It seems easy to follow, and she’s been bringing me pages from her new sketchbook filled with Christmas trees, elves, and ornaments.
In school, her class completed The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, which we’d read together last year. They’ve also continued to read from the I Survived Series, reading I Survived the Galveston Hurricane, 1900 by Lauren Tarshis. Eight-thousand people were killed in the Texas hurricane that took locals by surprise.
I recently edited a book in Theresa Linden’s Armor of God series, which my daughter loves. I need to get her her own copy of Boots of Peace, which follows George Pennington’s pursuit of a full set of armor. So far, he, his younger brother, and his friend Robyn have earned their Belt of Truth and Breastplate of Righteousness. With each piece earned, they learn valuable lessons about life and virtue while discovering a little more about the mysterious knights’ table they’ve discovered in the woods. This series is perfect for children in the sacramental years who are either preparing for or have recently received First Penance and First Holy Communion.
My third grader enjoyed Bots: The Most Annoying Robots in the Universe by Russ Bolts, in which some space robots are discovered. At least that’s what I absorbed from his brief description of this graphic novel about Joe and Rob, a couple of goofy robots who discover strange video cameras that fell from the sky.
All of the kids enjoyed Let’s Explore! Woodland Creatures by Claire Philip. It includes a series of woodland animals, how each is adapted to its habitat, finds food, is affected by the seasons, and more. The illustrations by Jean Claude are charming too.
Our son received The Night the Saints Saved Christmas by Gracie Jagla, and it’s such a sweet and beautiful tale of the saints in heaven working to deliver Christmas presents when St. Nick gets sick. The rhyme is fun to read, and we love picking out the saints, like St. John Paul II delivering presents on skis or Blessed Pier Giorgio scaling mountains to distribute gifts. This book would make a treasured part of a child’s Christmas library.
Want more details on An Open Book? You can also sign up for An Open Book reminder email, which goes out one week before the link-up. No blog? That’s okay. Just tell us what you’re reading in the comment box.
THANKS FOR STOPPING BY! STAY A WHILE AND LOOK AROUND. LEAVE A COMMENT. SHARE WITH A FRIEND. IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, PLEASE SIGN UP FOR MY AUTHOR NEWSLETTER TO KEEP UP-TO-DATE ON NEW RELEASES, EXTRAS, AND HOT DEALS!
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I didn’t quite hit my Goodreads reading goal this year. I usually do. But circumstances were different this year, and that meant less reading and almost no writing. I’ve also become pickier and pickier about what I read and more and more critical, a hazard of being a writer and consuming many books.
In looking back over the 90+ books I read last year, these five-star books stood out. I didn’t double-check, but I’m fairly certain these are all 2021 releases. (Or, in the case of The Work of Our Hands, late 2020.)
Teenager Evie Gallagher is stunned when her 45-year-old father dies tragically and suddenly. Too many unanswered questions accompany Evie’s challenging journey to adulthood. When she finally discovers the reason her father led such a troubled life, shock turns to anger. She is determined to find justice for her father.
Nervous about the first day of his freshman year, 14-year-old Hank Gallagher steps inside Holy Archangels High School for the first time in September of 1954. Although the majestic Holy Archangels statues inside the school’s grand lobby present an air of protection, it is not long before Hank passes right under them and into the hands of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Confused and cornered by threats, Hank attempts to abandon his secret to the past, but a horrible wound on his heart eventually leads to a catastrophic breakdown.
Based loosely on actual events, chapters alternate between Evie and Hank to reveal a life haunted by betrayal and a revelation of true justice and hope.
