Bright Wings: Children’s Books to Make the Heart Soar

Marcie Stokman, founder and president of Well-Read Mom, joins Charity for a conversation. Marcie tells of the need she saw that motivated her to found Well-Read Mom. Marcie and Charity share how deep reading, in a community of women, has impacted them. They talk about the "moral imagination" and how fiction shapes a sense of truth and goodness. Charity and Marcie urge you to "take care of our heart" as ingredient to mothering.
A book list that includes some favorites from Charity and Marcie's families.
How does reading help us "navigate complex social relationships" and the "empathetic responses that maintain them"?
AND
Are we rendering ourselves intellectually and physiologically incapable of deep literacy? What can we do to save our minds?

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.
Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Dr. Grace Hamman from Old Books With Grace joins Charity to take a closer look at the Middle Ages. Charity asks Grace what made her fall in love with this era. Charity also asks, "Did women write/illustrate books? What were some of the achievements of the Medieval period? How hard did peasants work? How are hospitals an especially Medieval achievement? Were manners invented in the Middle Ages?" They talk about how to see the era with "texture," to see the good and bad of this time, without imposing our own viewpoint. Do our children's books on the Middle Ages simply insert a modern person into a archaic situation--and it feels like a slap!? Or does our fiction help us enter the Medieval world and the medieval mind and body?
Links:

• Our Fabulous Middle Ages Book List
• Isenheim Altarpiece, from a thoughtful art tourist
• Isenheim Altarpiece, from Liturgical Arts Journal
• How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.
Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Are you ready to have the biggest parent-teacher conference of your life? Listen as Jeremy Adams describes the pandemic of vacuity that is afflicting our young people. A decorated and most-beloved CA teacher, Jeremy Adams is the author of Hollowed Out: A Warning About America's Next Generation. He demonstrates the "uniquely perilous" position of our young people. What is he seeing in his classroom that is so different from 5-10 years ago? Why are teens "friendless and depressed...lost in a miasma of alienation and stupefaction"? Why are they uncurious, stunted, and uninformed? And most importantly what can we pour into them so they are no longer "hollow"?
Purchase Jeremy Adams' Hollowed Out: A Warning About America's Next Generation
Read "The Death of Gratitude In the American Classroom," by Jeremy Adams, originally published in The Public Discourse.
Also:

• The Rise of Zoombies: Lifeless, Detached Students Have Returned to My Classroom
• My Late Father Was A Great Teacher. He Wouldn't Last a Week In the Modern Classroom.
• Keeping Our Youngest Generation From Becoming the Lost Generation

The Antidote! Links!

• 1000 Hours Outside
• The Family Dinner Project. Check out their research and ideas.

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.
Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

At listener request, Charity answers some of your most practical and theoretical questions about going to the library. Should you go to the library? What should you do about story time? Can going to the library with toddlers be fun? How do you navigate that situation? How do you choose what books to bring home? What are your parameters for decision-making? How do I find a book that isn't in the catalogue? What the dickens is the difference between Libby and Hoopla?! Answers to these questions--and stories shared by Charity Hill--await you.

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.
Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

As part of an ongoing initiative, Charity Hill reviews children's books. In this episode, Charity reviews two novels by Sara Pennypacker: Pax and Here In The Real World. In Pax, we find a deep relationship between a boy (Peter) and his partially domesticated fox (Pax), a search for a moral identity, and a quest to make peace. Finally, Charity wonders if the end is satisfying to a readership that craves an answer to Peter's search. Charity praises Here In the Real World for its masterful ability to propose problems (character vs. parents, character vs. friends, hope vs. cynicism, chivalry vs. feminism) with rich and nuanced responses. In both novels, Charity notices how Pennypacker uses the titles and the characters names to alert us to deep meaning.
Thank you for purchasing through the links. I receive 10% of sales.
To purchase Here In the Real WorldTo purchase Pax

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.
Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!