MOVING!

Hello to all you lovely readers.

I’m moving! The Wholeheart Readers blog has found an airy, spacious, and much more navigable home over at Read for the Heart. I’m sort of restarting the blog over there, and will be regularly posting reviews and research and bookish sorts of thoughts. So come on over! I’ll see you there.

The Much-Desired Book List

For all of you who requested… here ’tis! And for all of you who didn’t, well, have fun anyway. You can never know about too many good books now can you? I began this list for the talks I did at the WHM conferences this year. I tend to talk too quickly in my speeches for people to write everything down, so here is the list in its completed glory:

Picture Books
1. When I Was Young In the Mountains (Cynthia Rylant)
2. When the Relatives Came (Cynthia Rylant)
3. Bunny Bungalow (Cynthia Rylant)
4. Miss Rumphius (Barbara Cooney)
5. Roxaboxen (Barbara Cooney)
6. Only Opal (Barbara Cooney)
7. The Brambly Hedge Series (Jill Barklem)
8. The Boy Who Held Back the Sea (Thomas Locker)
9. The Young Artist (Thomas Locker)
10. Fritz and the Beautiful Horses (Jan Brett)
11. The Bear Who Heard Crying (Natalie Kinsey Warnock)
12. All the Places to Love (Patricia MacLachlan)
13. A Song for Lena (Hilary Horder Hippely)
14. Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown)
15. Make Way For the Ducklings (Robert McCloskey)

Children’s Classics
1. Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie)
2. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
3. The Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
4. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
5. The Tales of Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne)
6. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter)
7. The Anne Series (L.M. Montgomery)
8. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
9. Little Men (Louisa May Alcott)
10. Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)
11. Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
12. The Water Babies (Charles Kingsley)
13. The Railway Children (E. Nesbit)
14. The Treasure Seekers (E. Nesbit)
15. Heidi (Johanna Spyri)

Children’s Fiction
1. The Little Britches Series (Ralph Moody)
2. All of A Kind Family (Sydney Taylor)
3. Caddie Woodlawn (Carol Ryrie Brink)
4. The Winter Cottage (Carol Ryrie Brink)
5. Johnny Tremain (Esther Forbes)
6. The Good Master (Kate Seredy)
7. Carry On Mr. Bowditch (Jean Lee Latham)
8. Ellen (E.M. Almedingen)
9. Across Five Aprils (Irene Hunt)
10. I, Juan de Pareja (Elizabeth Borton de Trevino)
11. The Journeyman (Elizabeth Yates)
12. Escape from Warsaw (Julian Padowicz)
13. The Trumpeter of Krakow (Eric Kelly)
14. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Joan Aiken)
15. Because of Winn Dixie (Kate DiCamillo)

Fairy Tale/Fantasy
1. The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
2. The Princess and the Goblins (George MacDonald)
3. The Princess and the Curdie (George MacDonald)
4. At the Back of the North Wind (George MacDonald)
5. The Light Princess (George MacDonald)
6. The Lost Princess (George MacDonald)
7. Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
8. The Redwall Series (Brian Jacques)
9. Dangerous Journey (John Bunyan)

Kim Lewis

Sorry for the terribly long time in between posts!

It’s taken me a couple of weeks to get my world to stop whirling after the summer in England. But now that I’m relatively sane again, I’m excited to show you a few of the literary treasures I found during my summer adventure. There are bookshops galore over there and I certainly explored a bunch and found a few out-of-print beauties. But the books I’m featuring today were an entirely accidental find in a Lake District shop.

I knew of Kim Lewis from the single book of hers that made it into our library: First Snow was one of Joy’s (my little sister) and my favorite read-alouds. We both loved the simply told tale of a little girl and her mother on a hill farm in England and of their foray out into the pastures to herd in the sheep as the first snowstorm crept in. Joy loved the sheepdog especially. The pictures were half the appeal of the book with their realistic, but lovely portrayal of life in the hills, all drawn in warm, earthy colors.

Thus, imagine my surprise and delight when, rumbling through the corners of a print shop, I found four Kim Lewis books on half price sale and so bought the last four titles they had. I don’t know why I had never searched to find more of her titles before, but I’ve been thoroughly delighted to discover that she has a large body of work. Her books are simple, wholesome, based on the English farm life that she and her husband actually live. The realistic, wholesome nature of her pictures and the warm colors she chooses are perfectly suited to the eyes of little children as they begin to discover the wonder of the real world around them. (A quality which I find quite refreshing in an age of illustration whose whimsy sometimes borders on inanity.)

I’m eager to add more of these to my collection, but for now, am quite content to sit down with my four lucky finds:

Emma’s Lamb
Floss
The Last Train
Friends

If you’re interested, head over to Kim Lewis’ quite welcoming website. You’ll find a full page of her books with samples of story and picture, as well as a little more information on her life in the hills of England. Meanwhile, I’m off to enjoy the first of September with a cup of tea and these beautiful books.

Essential Reading

Hey-ho from merry England! It’s a dappled beauty of an evening and I’m working on the introduction to my “book on books”. That worthy activity led me to a rediscovery of some of the reserach I have done into reading and its effects on the minds of children. It’s just too good to be kept for later; I thought you might like to see it. The simple, amazing truth I’m finding is that reading literally will change the course of a child’s future simply by equipping him/her to be able to comprehend ideas and meaning. The other simple truth is that a good bit of technological media will inhibit that ability. There’s just no way around it. Here are a few of the best articles I found in my internet snooping. Reading really is essential to the forming of a mind you see, and this is essential reading on the subject of reading. Got it?
I wonder if you’ll find these as enlightening (and convicting and frightening) as I.

Reading at Risk. This was one of the largest studies every conducted into literacy in America. It was headed by Dana Gioia, director of the National Endowment of the Arts. I heard about this research when I attended a conference where Mr. Gioia spoke; his findings on literacy are literally astounding.

Endangered Minds. As I searched the web, a name that came up over and over again was that of Jane Healey, a professor and writer who has done extensive research into the impact of reading on the mind and life of a child. This is a sample chapter from her book.

Reading and the Matthew Effect. A fascinating explanation of research that indicates that children who are exposed to a high level of vocabulary (i.e., books, reading, reading aloud, etc.) in their beginning years of education will have the necessary brain skill to grasp knowledge in all areas of learning.

Shakespeare Smarts. Last, but not least, a slightly more enjoyable piece on the dramatic effect that the reading of Shakespeare has on the brain. I knew there must be a reason I felt more intelligent after seeing As You Like It performed last week!

So. Enjoy those tidbits. I’m working on posting some new reviews soon, so check back every now and then. And meanwhile…happy reading.

Winnie the Pooh

Greetings from merry old England!

I write you from the storied haunt of the golden age writers, cup of tea appropriately in hand. Hey, this is where the Golden Age began and I’m finding great inspiration in roaming the hills and dales and cobblestone streets of my favorite authors. I’m going to come home significantly poorer as there are countless old book shops crammed in every nook with compact beauties of children’s literature. So in the midst of all this literary enjoyment, I thought I’d just go ahead and begin my reviews, no better place to begin than in England. In honor of my time here, I’ve decided to begin with a classic. In and among my reviews of the newer and lesser known children’s stories, I’ll be periodically posting a review of the golden classics just to refresh our memories. It is an endless amazement to me how forgotten the golden age children’s classics have become. I’m on a one-woman mission to revive the knowledge and love of them.

So to begin: Winnie the Pooh.

I know. So basic. But I heard it read aloud the other day for the first time in years and it’s excellence caught me quite by surprise. You must picture the setting; thirty or so sophisticated, philosophical students at L’Abri all perched round a manor house great room for tea on a stormy afternoon, each reading a different part of the tale. We chose Pooh’s expedition to the North Pole. The story had all of us, children, parents, college-students, post-graduates, old and young laughing until our sides quite literally ached.

From an adult point of view, I was struck by the cleverness of the telling; the artfully captured personality of each animal (you’ll find yourself identifying with one of them, I guarantee), the whimsy of the writer, the compact delight of the small world of the Hundred Acre Wood. Milne was quite a clever writer whose delight in the creation of this compact world for his son comes through in every line.

Reading in view of a child audience, the simplicity and whimsy of the story stood out strongly. For the Pooh stories are delightful, told in words and images accessible and familiar to any child. But there is a subtle undercurrent of moral instruction running through the veins of this simple story. Lessons in basic virtues of kindness, friendship, loyalty and courage run quietly through each compact tale. In this, the Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is much like it’s fellow golden age classics in its creation of a small, personal world that is implicitly moral and explicitly beautiful, creating an imaginative reality of goodness in the mind of a small child. These stories are simple, they are innocent, but their loveliness crafts a value for goodness and beauty in the quickly-forming values of children. For this, and their timeless delight, I think they are to be deeply treasured. Enjoy.

Resources:

Official Pooh Site
Pooh Books
Unofficial Pooh Site

Hey Everyone

Welcome to Whole Heart Readers… which is really a bit of an internet cafe for the discussion of and delight in great literature for kids. I’m eager to introduce you to the stories that shaped me, and to discuss at length just how specifically they molded my soul. Look here for reviews on kid’s lit new and old and in every possible genre. Check back often for updates in research on reading, on great quotes culled in my own literary hours, and just for some good old-fashioned literary discussion. Books are the sort of gift that really do alter the mind and mold the soul. So I’m here to set you on the track of the very best.

So for now, happy reading! The first review is coming soon…