I frequently hear busy parents bemoan a lack of time, patience, or both, to read for pleasure. Others wonder how to inspire their children to develop a greater love for books. Here we’ll explore four ways to combine family time with reading time, including family reading night, reading at the table, family book clubs, and reading outdoors.
Any of these will make family reading time a ritual to look forward to, equally pleasurable for parents and kids. Reading aloud with or to your kids is a whole topic unto itself, which we’ll explore in Reading Aloud to Children: Creating Lifelong Book Lovers. Read More→
From the 2013 Timber Press edition of Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell: If you’re one of the millions of readers who grew up on Beatrix Potter’s tales, then you know that her illustrations are filled with carefully observed flowers and gardens.
Yet this aspect of her life — one of the richest and most enduring sources of inspiration for her work — has received little attention until now.
In this engagingly written and delightfully illustrated book, Marta McDowell takes you on a personal journey, tracing the development and eventual blossoming of Beatrix Potter’s life as a gardener, from her childhood interest in plants, through her development as an artist to her final years as an estate farmer and naturalist. Read More→
The Harlem Renaissance movement in 1920s New York City ushered in an era of immense cultural and creative achievement. Highlight here are fourteen Black women writers of the Harlem Renaissance movement.
Black women in the creative arts who had long faced the dual struggle of race and gender found a more welcoming oasis for their talents than ever before in this creative movement.
A substantial number of Black women made a name for themselves as writers, playwrights, poets, editors, artists, and journalists. Using their talent to create and perform, they also worked as educators, editors, librarians, musicians, and more. Read More→
“I long for life, and there is no help. I thirsted for the unknown; the thirst is gone. O God, let me stay with the known, and be weary of it: I am content.” The Lifted Veil by George Eliot is an 1859 novella that departs sharply from the usual realism of the esteemed British author’s fiction. She interrupted her work on The Mill on the Floss to work on this novella.
The Lifted Veil first appeared in Blackwood Magazine in 1859, the same year that her highly regarded novel Adam Bede was published.
It wasn’t published in book format until 1878 as part of a single volume with Silas Marner and Brother Jacob. The Lifted Veil wasn’t published as a stand-alone volume until 1924, more than forty years after the author’s death. Read More→
Frances Hodgson Burnett (November 24, 1849 – October 29, 1924) was born in Cheetham, England. She emigrated to the U.S. with her mother and siblings when she was in her teens, and started publishing stories in magazines to help support her family.
Burnett is best remembered as the author of The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy, though her prolific output went far beyond these now-classic works.
Victorian literature often had a rags-to-riches theme, or vice versa. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s own life reflected that theme. When she was born in England in 1840, she was one of five children in a household headed by a prosperous tradesman. He died when she was three, and the family’s fortunes plummeted.
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My Brilliant Career (1901) was Miles Franklin‘s first novel. Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879 – 1954) went on to become one of the most prominent Australian authors of her era.
She wrote this novel while still in her teens, and it was published in her twenty-first year.
It’s the story of tomboyish Sybilla Melvyn, a high-strung, imaginative girl from the Australian countryside. When her parents fall on hard times, they send her to live with her grandmother in another part of the country. Read More→
Beatrix Potter (July 28, 1866 – December 22, 1943) was a British author and illustrator of beloved children’s books populated by animals. Some of the best known are Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, and Jemima Puddleduck.
Her inspiration came from the natural world that surrounded her as a child, from which sprang an imagination that delights young readers to this day.
Beatrix was the daughter of conservative upper class parents, raised in a fine South Kensington home. As was typical for girls of her class, was educated at home by governesses. One of her only companions was her brother, Bertram, who was six years younger than she. Read More→
The following is an excerpt from Without the Veil Between: Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit — a novel by DM Denton:
When I set out, well over two years ago, to write a fiction about Anne Brontë, youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily, I doubted I would find enough material to produce something longer than a novella. Before the first part was finished, I was convinced there was more than enough for a novel.
My objective didn’t change as pages filled and multiplied. I wanted to present Anne as a vital person and writer in her own right, as crucial to the Brontë story and literary legacy as her more famous and — in her brother Branwell’s case — infamous siblings were. Read More→
