I’ve spent a lot of the last few months thinking about temptation.

First, Screwtape on Stage came to Phoenix, and at the last minute my husband and I were given tickets to take a group of high school students to the play. I did a quick re-read of the book beforehand and appreciated the play even more having done so. This was my third time seeing the show, and Lewis’s words become only richer for having heard them more often. The Fellowship for Performing Arts does excellent work. I highly recommend catching the show if it’s coming near you. (No kickbacks to me. I really respect FPA and its work.)

Then, I read two recent imitations of Screwtape focused on women and reviewed both for Religion Unplugged.

But the point I want to draw here regards children’s literature. One of the greatest gifts that fiction offers is the capacity to enter into another person’s perspective, which is another of way of saying, into another’s temptation.

Not just “to take us lands away,” as Emily Dickinson famously put it. But to take us minds away. To see inside another’s head, to watch the decision-making of another person in a set of circumstances unlike yet like our own. To see our hero or heroine enter into temptation, and to see the consequences of his or her decision.

This is, of course, part of what makes great literature great, and worthy for its own sake. But it also offers enormous practical value.

Experience shapes our inclinations and affections, to say nothing of our sense of morality and duty. But we can experience something only by—well, by experiencing it, and I’d really rather not experience every form of temptation. Jesus did that, as our Great High Priest who was tempted in every way, but I’m not Jesus, nor are my kids.

We cannot have every experience, but we do have stories. Stories offer a kind of artificial experience. Of places, yes. Of other eras, too. And also of other temptations.

When we read a story, whether it’s from the Bible or from Dr. Seuss, we’re facing someone else’s challenges. We’re looking straight at another’s temptation. We’re also seeing—unblinded as we would be for ourselves—the darkness of bad choices, the way sin shrinks the soul of the sinner, the consequences that extend much further than the doer imagined.

As Charlotte Mason put it in Ourselves, we can learn either “through what is called fiction, or from the bitter experience of life, from the penalties of which our writers of fiction do their best to spare us.” I’ll take learning through fiction, please.

Here are a few of the lessons that great children’s fiction can teach.

Temptation can be small

Literature can show something that is otherwise hard to see: temptation is often small. Only infrequently do we encounter it as the looming, enormous threat we imagine ourselves facing in a heroic showdown. There will be a small choice, something that seems inconsequential and hardly even wrong, that will turn out to be monumental. It’s just not possible to tell until afterwards. We don’t have the foresight to predict accurately which decisions will be important and which ones are not.

See Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, crouching in a tunnel before a dragon’s lair. He has traveled long, hired on speculation to rob back a dragon’s stolen treasure, and throughout the journey he—little Bilbo the Hobbit, untested, unaccustomed to adventure—has proven the hero over and over.

But now at the long-sought dragon’s lair, he hesitates. The tunnel is hot from the dragon’s breath. There is a sound of boiling. A red light emanates from further ahead. He stops.

Surely no one would fault him for cowardice in turning back. His companions, the dwarves, are too clumsy for burglary and will not try the tunnel. He might easily enough make excuse and run. Why not call it quits?

J.R.R. Tolkien—a World War I veteran who knew danger, both the visible and invisible kind—sums up Bilbo’s deliberation: “He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.” Tolkien lets us in on some hindsight, the narrator’s privilege, unknown to Bilbo, of course: “Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it.”

It’s a small moment in the story, a mere paragraph, probably just a few seconds of plot time, and yet everything hinges on this. Bilbo fought the real battle inside himself, and therefore went on to fight the visible, tangible battle that followed.

And this—a split-second decision made in darkness and solitude—is the moment on which all the later glorious moments depend.

Ambush

Have you ever won some big battle and thought, “I ought to reward myself,” and then gone and done something foolish? There’s no ill in an honest, well-earned celebration, but vanity and foolishness are particularly apt to lure us in just after some brave feat.

Children’s fiction warns us that having faced one temptation, we sometimes justify our giving way to a second, easier temptation, as in the case of Lucy in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Lucy is in the magician’s house searching for a spell to make invisible things visible. Doing so will pacify a band of small-minded one-footed creatures and enable her party’s escape. Others in her group have been peeved and angered by these Dufflepuds, but Lucy has been gracious and brave through much inconvenience and danger.

Searching through the book of spells, Lucy sees one that promises beauty beyond the lot of mortals. Wouldn’t it be nice to outshine her big sister? With much effort and Aslan’s help, she turns the page. She wins that battle.

But then she finds another spell. It will let her know what her friends think of her—not as desirable as beauty, but still interesting. So, “to make up for not having said” the first spell about being beautiful, Lucy decides “she really would say this one.” All in a hurry, she rushes on to say the words, knowing a moment’s rational thought would change her mind.

So come many temptations, parading as rewards for some other virtue. But sin never pays. Lucy overhears some unpleasant remarks about herself, damaging her friendships. Could she have remained friends with these girls? Aslan reminds her, “No one is ever told what would have happened.” The italics are in the original, driving home Lewis’s point. We only get one set of chances, one decision per moment in time.

What rules are for

Fiction teaches us that childhood rules are not the end-all-be-all, but stepping stones to what really matters: self-government. If we choose wisely, we might not need many rules—but we typically don’t, so we do.

On the Banks of Plum Creek offers us this picture. A young Laura Ingalls, having been warned not to visit a swimming hole alone, attempts to do just that. Naught but a threatening badger stops her plans. Talking through the situation later, Pa asks the right question: “Do you know what people have to do to anyone they can’t trust?”

There’s the point—trust. Temptation asks you to betray trust, to doubt the wisdom of the rightful authority who gave instruction. Laura quavers: “Wh-at?”

“They have to watch him,” said Pa. “So I guess you must be watched. Your Ma will have to do it because I must work at Nelson’s. So tomorrow you stay where Ma can watch you. You are not to go out of her sight all day.”

What follows is a dreadful day. Laura stays inside, mending and cleaning with Ma. She does not see the sunrise, nor the shadows, nor the creek or the fishes or the bugs. “She was sure that being good could never be as hard as being watched.”

Had Laura shown more wisdom, she would have needed fewer rules. When she behaves foolishly, Pa sets up the contrast not as obedience versus disobedience, but as trust versus distrust. A wise person can be trusted to govern herself. A foolish person needs rules. The consequences for foolish behavior fit—an untrustworthy person has to be watched.

Books matter

Stories are always shaping our moral view.

I have heard my children say, “I guess I’m being a little bit like Eustace right now,” or “That was like when Mary and Laura slid down Pa’s haystack.” Books give us a bench of similes to our own lives. Which character are we acting like at any given moment?

Books don’t save. Only God does that. But good stories are one of God’s many common graces that point toward truth, beauty, and goodness.

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A good book is a good book is a good book. The best children’s literature is excellent for adults. The great ones featuring girls are great for boys, and vice versa.

But there is a place for boy-focused books—an important place, I think. Not because books about boyhood are exclusively for boys. But because boyhood is different from girlhood. Boys should see boyhood in literature. They should see what growing into manhood looks like, what maturity is, and (ideally) how a father interacts with his son.

So many books for youth have female protagonists. But excellent boys’ books are out there, too. And once I sat down to think of them, I soon had far too long a list. I chose to constrain myself to ten. Perhaps later I’ll publish a second installment.

For this list, I selected only books whose main character is a boy. There are of course many other books a boy should read—books with girls as the main character, or anthropomorphized animals, or adults. Many other books seem to speak in a special way to boys without having a main character at all, such as those by David Macaulay, whom I profiled a few months ago. But for this list, you’ll see only boys as protagonists, and only chapter books.

I also limited this list to books I would feel comfortable letting my son read on his own. So as much as I love Little Britches and have championed its reading in more than a few recent posts, I left it off this list because of occasional language. (Given the ages of our children right now, we read Little Britches and its sequels aloud to permit occasional editing.) Each family has different standards—and of course the age of your son and his maturity level matters greatly—but on this list, I consider every book appropriate for independent reading.

Here are ten top-tier chapter books featuring boys.

The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis

Every book in the Chronicles of Narnia deserves to be on this list, but I’ll single out one that tends to get less attention. Shasta’s life seems shaped by random, illogical hardship, but actually Aslan has put together all the pieces whose purpose will in time be revealed.

Shasta faces not just danger, but danger in the midst of tasks (such as horse-riding) that he has never been taught to do. He has to learn to persevere, to trust, to open himself to friendship, to interact with girls, and to tell the truth. Along the way, Shasta meets Corin, Rabadash, Edmund, and other male figures who show other forms of masculinity—some good, and some bad.

In the end, Shasta discovers his father and his surprising birthright and learns what it means to be a king—standards that our family takes for what it means to be a man. In Shasta’s father’s words:

For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scanty meal than any man in your land.

Explore this title.

The Door in the Wall, by Marguerite de Angeli

Robin is nobility, and he knows the high duties expected from him—as well as the honor owed to him by others. But as the Black Death sweeps across Europe, he falls ill, losing not only his physical capability for the life he once envisioned, but the high status he once enjoyed. In this Newbery Medal winner, Robin learns humility and perseverance, as well as a newfound strength.

Though new walls may shut out old dreams, there is always a door for those who search.

Explore this title.

The Sword in the Tree, by Clyde Robert Bulla

An early chapter book written at about a 1^st-2^nd grade level, The Sword in the Tree tells of a young boy who comes into the demands of a knightly gentleman much younger than expected. To save his father’s life, he must find King Arthur and prove himself a man.

Explore this title.

Caleb’s Story, by Patricia MacLachlan

Caleb was quite young when Sarah, plain and tall, came to his family to be his new mother. Now he’s grown taller, big enough for his new little sister Cassie to look up to, and old enough to take on the task of writing down the family story.

In this third book of the Sarah, Plain and Tall series, we see the world through Caleb’s eyes and learn of old family wounds that he alone helps to mend.

Explore this title.

The Sign of the Beaver, by Elizabeth George Speare
Matt and his father settle early in Maine, and once they’ve got a cabin built, Pa hikes back to town to bring the rest of the family. Matt is left alone far longer than he expects.

Matt finds he cannot quite fend for himself, and he learns wisdom, independence, self-reliance, and basic forest skills through a surprise friendship with a Native American boy. We see pros and cons of both types of civilization as both boys learn from each other.

Explore this title.

Owls in the Family, by Farley Mowat

Farley can’t say no to any animal he finds, and that’s how he ends up with not one but two owls that, well, truly join the family. Dad is a little unsure about adding more creatures to the zoo quickly forming in the back yard, until he thinks of all the small creatures that owls eat. Maybe a couple of owls might decrease the population! That doesn’t happen, and Farley’s animals remain safe—from the owls, at least.

Mowat tells the true story of his childhood at a time when helicopter parenting just didn’t exist.

No matter how many times we’ve read this one, we still laugh uproariously each time.

Explore this title.

Mountain Born, by Elizabeth Yates

Peter grows up with the family flock of sheep, and he learns manhood as his responsibilities increase. Peter learns to do a job well the first time, for much depends on one’s early work. He earns greater responsibility as he shows himself worthy.

Sometimes a book takes a thin slice of the world and beholds it in all its wondrous detail, almost as a slide under a microscope. So does this Newbery Honor book. It’s a short book that brings to life one livelihood in one time period, but does so in a way that brings home the lessons common to all mankind.

Explore this title.

Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

From the author of Little House on the Prairie, a look at boyhood on a farm. Laura wrote the story of her husband, Almanzo, as he worked and played and went to school in upstate New York.

Almanzo raises animals, hauls lumber, trains animals, and – spoiler alert – works hard to demonstrate the maturity his father requires before he can earn his own horse.

So many life lessons crop up naturally in the story—on honesty, frugality, perseverance, and more. A chapter on the county fair sets up a discussion between Almanzo and his father on the value of money—a passage so straightforward and yet insightful that my husband includes it each year in the high school economics class he teaches.

Explore this title.

My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George

If a boy lived on his own in the forest, could he survive?

This is every boy’s dream, it seems, and My Side of the Mountain shows us a young man doing just that.

The first time I read this, I got angry that the boy had run away from home to do this and I worried that my kids would think I was legitimizing running away. Contrary to my fears, they didn’t even seem to notice how he got out there in the woods, but just drank up all the details on tree trunk houses and food foraging.

George wrote a trilogy, and all three books are worth reading.

Explore this title.

The Swamp Robber, by Paul Hutchens (and the rest of The Sugar Creek Gang series)

Six boys who hike, farm, play baseball, solve mysteries, and revel in adventure—that’s the Sugar Creek Gang.

All 36 books are packed with adventure, nature lore, first aid tips, and also life lessons in maturity and character. Read them all or start in the middle—each book can stand alone if needed.

I read these over and over as a child, and when I reread a few books last week to check how accurate my memory was, I was surprised to see how much poetry and Scripture is woven throughout the books.

Bill and his friends quote Longfellow and Robert Louis Stevenson to each other, and they stop to pray and consider the Bible as naturally as they might pause to read a map.

Explore this title.

Those are ten books that write of boyhood well. Happy reading!

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It’s been a delightful practice, but I’ll admit to chuckling over its debut. Upon hearing the announcement, my mind went straight to some of the pastoral visits in children’s literature…which are almost uniformly funny if not downright slapstick.

A few weeks ago we had our official pastoral visit for the year. I’m glad to say no one ate liniment cake or suffered other outrages.

But to commemorate the occasion, all trivia questions today involve other pastoral visits that did not turn out quite so well. Perhaps you can think of others? Add them in the comments!

Easy

This redhead delights in a visit from the new minister and his wife and participates in all the preparations, particularly taking ownership of the cake. Unfortunately the bottle labeled “vanilla” is actually filled with anodyne liniment.

“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

See the answer here.

Medium

These kids are desperate to make their fortune—they’ll even attempt peddling sherry to a tee-totaling minister! (Technically, the kids visit the minister, I guess it’s the reverse of a pastoral visit?)

See the answer here.

Hard

A whole menagerie lives at this boy’s home in Saskatchewan, and when the new minister stops by to warn against skipping Sunday School, an owl named Wol alights on his shoulder….and you can probably guess what happens next.

It’s a quick read, a book that particularly appeals to boys, and extra fun for all animal-lovers. (And did you catch the literary inspiration behind Wol’s name?)

See the answer here.

Bonus

In “The Awful Reason of the Vicar’s Visit,” the Vicar of Chuntsey in Essex comes by to tell a surprising tale:

I have never been forcibly dressed up as an old woman and made to take part in a crime in the character of an old woman. Never once. My experience may be small. It may be insufficient. But it has never occurred to me before.

Then begins the mystery.

This not a children’s book per se, but I think it could work as a read-aloud for older children with strong vocabularies. It’s a quirky, delightful read I highly recommend!

See the answer here.

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What I’m Reading

I didn’t plan it this way, but in June I read a number of books that hold a special appeal for boys (though girls, including my own daughter, have appreciated them too). I may do a whole post on books for boys in the future. Would that be of interest?

Mountain Born, by Elizabeth Yates

Peter grows up with the family flock of sheep, and he learns manhood as his responsibilities increase.

Sometimes a book takes a thin slice of the world and beholds it in all its wondrous detail, almost as a slide under a microscope. So does this Newbery Honor book. It’s a short book that brings to life one livelihood in one time period, but does so in a way that brings home the lessons common to all mankind.

Owls in the Family, by Farley Mowat

Farley can’t say no to any animal he finds, and that’s how he ends up with not one but two owls that, well, truly join the family. Mowat tells the true story of his childhood at a time when helicopter parenting just didn’t exist. No matter how many times we’ve read this one, we still laugh uproariously each time.

A Bear Called Paddington, by Michael Bond

Michael Bond didn’t envision Paddington as a children’s book, because like all great children’s books, it holds up for adults, too. He said,

It hadn’t been written with any particular age group in mind, which was fortunate, because until then I had always written for adults, and if I had consciously aimed at a young audience I might have “written down,” which is a bad idea. Anyway, I agree with Gertrude Stein: a book is a book is a book, and it should be enjoyable on all levels.

In part, he aimed at no particular age group because he wrote the book quite by accident. Paddington grew out of a morning writing exercise meant to get him warmed up for his real writing later.

The opening paragraph was simply an early-morning doodle brought on by the certain knowledge that if I didn’t put something down on the blank sheet of paper, in my typewriter, nobody else would.

Having written one paragraph, he found he had to keep going. Ten writing days later, he’d finished the book.

Ink on His Fingers, by Louise Vernon

A few months ago, I published a list of books that celebrate books. It’s been one of my most popular booklists (for obvious reasons!) and includes many of my own favorites.

But in that post, I crowdsourced a question. What’s a good book for children on Johann Gutenberg and the printing press? Everything I’d seen so far had been a disappointment.

suggested I try Ink on His Fingers. As of last week, my children and I have now finished reading it. It’s the best chapter book on Gutenberg I’ve seen. Thank you, Melisa!

I think Ink on His Fingers was meant to be read independently, not aloud, as it includes a lot of dialogue set off only by spacing and punctuation visible to the eye but harder to hear. That said, I did read it aloud, and my children loved it and kept asking for more.

Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream, by

I’ve been looking forward to this new release for months! Finally, homeschooling gets a historian’s treatment by a historian who also homeschools.

Often, when I read articles on homeschooling, they’re written from the outside looking in, with an attitude of “let’s see what strange things are going on in this alien world.” Lane says she set out to write a history of homeschooling that would be recognizable to homeschoolers. As a second-generation homeschooler myself, I’d say she succeeded.

I have a full review of Skipping School coming out later.

Make Way for Sam Houston, by Jean Fritz

Continuing on with my Jean Fritz reading: this one was again lively, fun, and informative. Like a few of Fritz’s other books, it touches (delicately!) on some heavy topics, including Houston’s repeated womanizing in the first half of his life.

Richard II, by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare is my Sunday afternoon read-aloud with my husband, and this year, we’re working our way through the history plays. (From time to time we also try to speed up to match the pace on Taylor D’Amico’s Shakespeare in a Year, though this month we did not succeed.)

So many famous Shakespearian lines come from Richard II, but the one that’s become my new almost-daily go-to is “thanks, the exchequer of the poor.”

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

Science fiction is not my normal genre, but that’s why it can be good to join a book group and branch out!

I haven’t seen the movie, but the book felt to me a bit like reading a movie. The sentences set up a series of visual images in my mind, and some scenes seemed written for big screen action.

Overall I enjoyed the book, though this one asked me to suspend a little too much disbelief in places. I was happy with the ending, however!

What have you been reading in June?

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In this household, we relive historical and literary events. Had you come by on a certain spring day, you may have seen some children in blue wielding tin foil battle axes as Celtic warriors. Another day, you might find our backyard turned into Gettysburg. And a few times each year, elves, dwarves, and hobbits descend as we host family and friends for a Tolkien Recitation Night. (I’ll write more on that later this summer, in time for Hobbit Day in September.)

Perhaps you find this very exciting and inspiring, or maybe it’s not your thing. If so, just scroll straight down to the bottom of this post and see the booklist.

Last year, on its 810^th anniversary, we “signed” the Magna Carta. (I say “signed,” because really King John affixed a royal stamp in wax.) My parents sourced some venison for a royal stew. We made trenchers (hard, flat bread used instead of plates), and there were no forks, only spoons. In true medieval fashion, all the guests had to bring their own knives. We may have bent this rule for two who forgot.

So, for the Semiquincentennial, of course we’re going to sign the Declaration of Independence.

My first task was to print a facsimile of the Declaration. But a 21x27 document reduced to 8.5x11 isn’t really readable, to say nothing of leaving space to sign.

I searched around for something more suitable for our reenactment, and didn’t find quite what I wanted.

So I decided to make it. Imagine my delight to discover that some brilliant font-maker took the handwriting of Timothy Matlock (the scribe who wrote out the official copy of the Declaration) and turned it into a font!

But even the best scribe writes less consistently than a font, and the Declaration has some different lettering at the top. So I fiddled around some more, and came up with this.

I put the famous first paragraph (“When in the course of human events…”) and the last half of the last paragraph, ending with “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” The heart of the Declaration is there. The writing is large enough that you can read it on standard printer paper. There’s room for your children (or you!) to sign your own name at the bottom.

So, join me in printing your own copy! If you want to go all out, get some yellowed paper, an inkwell and quill pen, and maybe even a tricorn hat.

Be sure to read the whole thing aloud. (See the full text at the National Archives.) In my experience, kids are surprisingly interested in “the long chain of abuses” and other parts that start to make adults’ eyes glaze over.

Then, whip out your quill and put your John Hancock at the bottom.

Signable Declaration of Independence

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Books for the Fourth

A few months ago, in honor of America’s 250th birthday, I shared a long list of “Books that Love America.”

Today I’m adding a few more and excerpting others from that list that speak specifically to the Fourth of July.

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The Fourth of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh, illustrated by Marie Nonnast

This is one of my favorite American picture books, and somehow I left it off my “Books that Love America” list! To remedy that mistake, The Fourth of July Story goes straight to the top of this list.

Dalgliesh brings the story of July 4^th to life, showing us both the people and the ideas at work. This picture book is a treasure.

Explore this title.

Will You Sign Here, John Hancock? by Jean Fritz
How did John Hancock come to have such a famous signature, and why did he sign anyway? Not shying away from vanity or other less virtuous motivations, Fritz gives a lively portrait of a famous early American whose grand spirit matched the greatness of his cause.

Written for about a second-grade reading level, Fritz’s book is great for early readers but also holds up well as a read-aloud.

Explore this title.

Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? by Jean Fritz

King George wasn’t expecting to be king, and he certainly wasn’t expecting his colony to break loose. Fritz gives us an interesting look at what was playing out on the other side of the Atlantic.

Like Will You Sign Here, John Hancock? a second grader could read this independently, or as always, Jean Fritz’s lively writing sustains being read aloud, too.

Explore this title.

Thomas Jefferson, by Cheryl Harness
Cheryl Harness offers incredible paintings to accompany each biography she writes, and this is no exception. We look at Jefferson beyond his work on the Declaration. Harness references Sally Hemmings several times in a judicious manner.

Explore this title.

How are you celebrating the Semiquincentennial?

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Book deals, book deals. Every time I open Substack, I see that someone else has signed a book deal. So many new books are entering the world!

I haven’t written a book, but a different type of book deal is on my mind today. Bargains.

I shop for books ALL over the place. (Just ask the mailman who delivers the packages.) I also have a favorite used bookstore nearby that I frequent, plus Goodwill, which usually has a decent selection, though it takes some time to sort through. Hand-me-downs and book swaps are also among my favorite ways to acquire (and share!) books. Today, though, is Amazon Prime Day, and I’m keeping my eyes open for book discounts online. I’ll round up a few at the bottom of this post.

But first, trivia. This week each book features some question of bargain, thrift, or value. How many can you identify?

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Literary Trivia

Easy

These shopkeepers offer unlimited credit, so of course the customers never pay. Such bargains one can get at this store! There is no money in the till, “but the sales were enormous, ten times as large as Tabitha Twitchit’s.”

See the answer here.

Medium

Thelma (for ulterior motives) insists that plastic teacups are the best value, and by the end, everyone learns that “being careful isn’t nice; being friends is better.”

It’s an excellent beginner book for an early reader with a story quality that holds up as a read-aloud, too.

See the answer here.

Hard

A girl gets a new bookcase for her birthday, and it turns out to be the most expensive present ever. By comparison, the rest of the room looks shabby, so she sets off to redo everything else—and learn a lot about contentment.

By the way, if you aren’t familiar with this series, it’s among the most underrated, lesser-known series out there—a real gem.

See the answer here.

Bonus Question

What’s the real value in going to church? Maybe to get some snacks and raid the offering plate? So these kids think, but once they become regular attendees, both they and the regular church-goers understand a bit better the value in why Jesus came.

(This may be the book that has provoked the most family laughter.)

See the answer here.

Prime Day Deals

If you’re looking for deals on books, I’ll be tracking some of the best discounts on Amazon Prime Day (June 23-26).

As always, everything I list is a book I have read and truly recommend.

For the next three days, I’ll update this post once per day, typically around 3:00 PM Arizona time, so check back to see new sales.

If you’re really tracking deals and are worried you’ll miss some, you can also sign up for me to send you a list of Prime Day Deals once each afternoon, starting today and continuing over the next three days: June 23, 24, 25, and 26. This is separate from my regular posts at The Hundred Acre Bookshelf—it’s just for those deal-hawks who are eager for Prime Day bargains. I’ll email once each afternoon. Sign up here.

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6/26/26 Prime Day Book Deals

It’s the last day of Amazon Prime Day deals. I hope you found some new great books to take home. Here are the last of the new deals I spotted.

Enjoy!

Chapter Books

Billy and Blaze - complete boxed set – 45% off

The Boxcar Children – boxed set of #1-12 – 50% off

Anne of Green Gables – complete boxed set of all 8 books – 50% off

Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff – 40% off

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry – boxed set 40% off

Johnny Tremain – 40% off

The Burgess Seashore Book for Children – 40% off

Picture Books

The Complete Brambly Hedge 40% off

Natural History (DK Definitive Visual Encyclopedias) – 50% off (I have not read every page of this)

Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Clancy Holling – 30% off

Seabird by Holling Clancy Holling – 40% off

Leaf Man – 60% off

6/25/26 Prime Day Book Deals

Some of the deals from the past few days have sold out, but some are still going, so you may want to scroll down and check. Here are the best new deals I spotted today.

Chapter Books

Little Women clothbound 50% off

The Borrowers – complete boxed set – 60% off

The Tale of Desperaux – 30% off

Lord of the Flies – 60% off (for older children)

The Complete My Father’s Dragon trilogy – 40% off

Picture Books

Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges – 45% off (jump on this one!)

Roxaboxen – 40% off – one of my favorite picture books! (for my fellow Arizonans, it’s also set in Arizona)

A Medieval Feast – 30% off

The complete Book of the Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker – 40% off

Mummies Made in Egypt – 35% off

William Shakespeare and the Globe – 20% off

The Bard of Avon by Diane Stanley – 40% off

Cleopatra by Diane Stanley – 35% off

Leonardo da Vinci by Diane Stanley – 20% off

Michelangelo by Diane Stanley – 20% off

Complete Collection of Mother Goose – leather edition – 50% off

Fletcher and the Falling Leaves – 50% off

Tops and Bottoms – 60% off

6/24/26 Prime Day Book Deals

A number of the deal I shared yesterday are still live, so you’ll want to scroll back and check those as well. Here are some new deals I spotted today.

Chapter Books

Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers – 50% off

The Bronze Bow – 40% off

Charlotte’s Web deluxe edition – 40% off

Picture Books

Jan Brett’s Winter Collection Boxed Set – 40% off

The Mitten by Jan Brett – 55% off

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Jan Brett – 45% off

Thundercake by Patricia Polacco – 40% off

The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco – 30% off

George Washington’s Breakfast by Jean Fritz and Tomie dePaola – 30% off

Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? - 45% off

Richard Scarry’s Busy Busy World – 35% off

Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever – 40% off

Richard Scarry’s Busy Busy Boxed Set – 40% off

Board Books

Little Blue Truck – 50% off

Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett – 40% off

Tree: A Peek-Through Board Book by Britta Teckentrup - 45% off

6/23/26 Afternoon Update on Prime Day Deals

Chapter Books

Beatrix Potter’s Complete Tales – 50% off

The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh - hardcover 55% off

The Wingfeather Saga boxed set – 60% off (bending my rule here—I haven’t read it yet, but my husband has, and we have the same standards for children’s books)

Charlotte’s Web – hardcover and paperback both 50% off

A Bear Called Paddington – 40% off

The Mouse and the Motorcycle – complete set – 60% off

A Lion to Guard Us – 50% off

Aesop’s Fables hardcover – 60% off

Little House in the Big Woods – hardcover 40% off, paperback 50% off

The Family Under the Bridge – 40% off

The Giver – hardcover 50% off (for older children)

My Side of the Mountain – hardcover 40% off, paperback 50% off

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever – hardcover 40% off

Mary Poppins complete boxed set – 40% off

Picture Books

Amelia Bedelia – 40% off

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? – 40% off

The Velveteen Rabbit – hardcover 60% off

Dr. Seuss’s Beginning Reader boxed set – 50% off

Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel – boxed set, complete collection 50% off

Mouse Soup by Arnold Lobel – 40% off

Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel – 35% off

Miss Rumphius – hardcover and paperback both 40% off – one of my all-time favorite picture books!

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton – 60% off

Sheep in a Jeep – 60% off

Big Red Barn – 50% off

6/23/26 Prime Day Deals

Chapter Books

Winnie-the-Pooh 60% off

The House at Pooh Corner 35% off

The Boxcar Children #1-4 60% off

Chronicles of Narnia boxed set 50% off (original Pauline Baynes illustrations inside)

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, 75^th anniversary edition with Tolkien’s own art inside and out 50% off

The Lord of the Rings with Tolkien’s own art 55% off

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings illustrated by Alan Lee 50% off

The Biggest Story Bible Storybook (by Kevin DeYoung) 57% off

The Biggest Story: How the Snake-Crusher Brings Us Back to the Garden (by Kevin DeYoung) 40% off

Picture Books

Pyramid by David Macaulay 40% off

City by David Macaulay 40% off

Cathedral by David Macaulay 40% off

The Way Things Work by David Macaulay 50% off

Where the Wild Things Are 60% off

Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? 40% off

Dr. Seuss boxed collection 50% off

Board Books

Poke-A-Dot Old MacDonald (extra fun for littles) 45% off

The Biggest Story ABC (by Kevin DeYoung) 50% off

Sandra Boynton yellow boxed set 30% off

Sandra Boynton blue boxed set 50% off

Goodnight Moon 50% off

Brown Bear, Brown Bear and friends boxed set 50% off

50% off Amazon Prime for young adults age 18-24

Discounted trial of Audible

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But for every bad portrayal of fatherhood, there are many good ones out there. I sat down this week to think of some of the children’s books that show fatherhood at its best.

Many books include virtuous dads. Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind. In The Railway Children (not to be confused with The Boxcar Children), Father’s absence and the question of his virtue drives the whole plot.

Owl Moon (which we’ve previously covered here) gives us a dad spending the night with his young daughter, tramping the woods to look for owls. Fiona’s Lace and other books by Patricia Polacco show fathers loving their wives, working hard for their families. In Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne comes into some chapters, interacting with his son Christopher Robin in a delightful, thoughtful way.

Barbara Cooney in Island Boy offers a lifetime snapshot of a good man whose influence spans generations. In Always Room for One More (quickly becoming one of my favorite picture books, discussed more here), one dad’s sense of hospitality briefly puts his family in danger, but ultimately results in a better life. And of course in favorites like We’re Going on a Bear Hunt we’ve got a dad taking his kids out on adventures—just maybe getting a little too adventurous. The Moon Is Always Round offers the true story of a dad walking through grief and hardship alongside his young son, teaching him that God is good even in deep sorrow (in this case, the loss of an unborn baby).

But for the list below, I chose books that forefront the fatherhood theme a little more clearly. They aren’t books about fatherhood, per se, because no one wants a lecture delivered in the guise of fiction. They’re books whose stories naturally honor and foreground the importance of having a good dad.

With Father’s Day just around the corner, let’s celebrate dads and honor them for who they are.

Books that honor fatherhood

This list contains Amazon affiliate links. You can also see the complete list at Bookshop.org.

Guess How Much I Love You, by Sam McBratney, illustrated by Anita Jeram

It’s a classic, a staple in every home library, probably already on your shelf. I didn’t remember, until I became a mom and read it to my own children, that it’s the dad putting his son to bed, whispering “I love you to the moon and back.”

Explore this title.

Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers, by Ralph Moody

Like a male counterpart to Little House on the Prairie, Little Britches follows a family heading west to start life over. Young Ralph considers himself a Colorado rancher right along with Father, and together they handle poverty, adversity, unfairness, and general hardship with fortitude and courage.

Ralph is young enough to get into all kinds of trouble, most of it due to not thinking about what he’s doing. Father handles all of it with wisdom that seems to rival Solomon’s.

By the end of our recent family read-aloud, we were all crying.

Little Britches does contain occasional swearing from the Moodys’ colorful ranching neighbors, and there is one brief scene in which Ralph hears some innuendo. I prefer Little Britches as a read-aloud, enabling parental editing as needed.

Explore this title.

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My Father’s Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Often among the first chapter books an early reader may crack open, My Father’s Dragon makes a good read-aloud as well.

A young boy braves great dangers to rescue a mistreated dragon. That alone is interesting. But strikingly, the whole story is told in first person not by the dragon-saver, but by his son, thinking back to when his father was a boy, telling us with pride of his father’s courage and resourcefulness.

Perhaps it’s just a storytelling vehicle, but I think there’s real significance in a tale that presents itself through the eyes of a young boy glorifying his dad.

Gannett wrote two sequels, but they drop the storytelling-by-son method.

Explore this title.

Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (and the whole series)

Pa can build a log cabin and plant enough crops that it seems the family is about to “live like kings,” as he repeats over and over. It’s clear that Laura deeply loves and respects her Pa, as does Ma, whose hard work brings domestic peace to the chaos of pioneer life.

The whole series reads as a tribute to Pa. Farmer Boy, the story of Laura’s husband Almanzo, rivals Little Britches as a tale of boyhood lived in awe of a truly great father.

In recent years, this famous series has come under fire for insensitive portrayals of Native Americans. Rereading the series recently, I saw the concerning statements, of course, but I was also struck by how Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the story of the pioneers’ own confusion, mixed motives, and regret over the morality of what they and the U.S. government were doing. It’s clear that some characters hate the Indians, but many others, including Laura and to some extent Pa, are worried and saddened by unfair treatment. More blatantly inappropriate to me is a chapter in Little Town on the Prairie that includes a black-face show without any such redeeming qualities. I skip that chapter when I read aloud.

Explore this series.

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Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink

Our list today has a number of pioneer tales, and as much as I love Laura Ingalls Wilder, Caddie Woodlawn might actually be my favorite. (It also features prominently in our Semiquincentennial booklist, “Books that Love America.”)

Spirited tomboy Caddie loves life on the frontier, running wild with two of her brothers. She tends to dismiss civilization as mere fashion and manners (and indeed we meet a few characters who seem to treat society this way). It takes her father—a strong, independent man who earns the respect of all—to demonstrate that one can be gentle and strong, independent and civic, meek and commanding.

Among Mr. Woodlawn’s leadership traits is a deep respect for his Native American neighbors. Caddie Woodlawn stands out as a pioneer tale that carefully represents the nuances of pioneer life.

alerted me that there’s a lesser-known sequel, Caddie Woodlawn’s Family. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my shelf ready to go sometime this summer. If you’ve read it before, please leave a comment and tell me what you think!

Explore this title.

Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

Maybe you’ve seen one of the movie adaptions, but the original book written by two of the twelve siblings reflects on their father’s unconventional and highly amusing style of raising his kids. Frank Gilbreth—a real man—was an efficiency expert who laid the groundwork for the modern field of ergonomics, and he raises his large family on the same principles.

Mr. Gilbreth teaches his kids to swim and sail and tap out Morse Code with butter knives on plates. They listen to foreign language records in the bathtub and solve math puzzles at the dinner table. Mr. Gilbreth times himself buttoning his shirt top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top to be sure he dresses efficiently—all with an eye not to speeding up life, but to saving time for what matters most.

(The sequel Belles on Their Toes is equally worthy reading, and offers a more direct tribute to Mrs. Gilbreth, herself an impressive engineer and remarkable mother.)

Explore this title.

This list contains affiliate links. You can also see the complete booklist at Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that shares profits with independent bookstores. If you make a purchase through any of my links above, I earn a small commission, which helps support my writing and enables me to continue producing these lists. Thank you!

What other books celebrate fathers? What would you add to the list?

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You all voted last week, and the winner of The Great American Picture Book contest is…Blueberries for Sal! This classic by Robert McCloskey won a 1949 Caldecott Honor, remains a bestseller, and (perhaps the surest stamp of approval) stands as a consistent favorite with children and their parents. Now it adds to its trophy case the official Hundred Acre Bookshelf Great American Picture Book award.

Congratulations to Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel for a well-earned second place finish.

Thanks to all who nominated books and voted! If you’d like to vote in more literary tournaments in the future, leave a comment or reply by email to let me know what categories you’d like to see.

A few times a month we dive into literary trivia, so in honor of Blueberries for Sal, all of today’s questions involve berries. How many of these books can you identify?

Literary Trivia

Easy

A bear and a boy bond over berry-picking. Raspberry jazzberry razzamatazzberry!

See the answer here.

Medium

While picking blackberries to fill the Store Stump for winter, one berry-picker wanders off and gets lost in the Chestnut Woods.

See the answer here.

Hard

When Dad dies during the Great Depression, a girl and her family forage for food, including berries that fill their jars like jewels. (Despite such a serious summary, this is actually an uplifting, excellent picture book.)

See the answer here.

Bonus

Today we have two bonus questions.

Bonus question #1: G is for gooseberry, grapefruit, and grape. H is for huckleberry.

See the answer here.

Bonus question #2: In this chapter book, the extended family gathers for a dance at Grandpa’s to celebrate maple sugar season. Aunt Docia’s dress has buttons that look just like blackberries.

See the answer here.

Plus, if this post has put you in the mood for berries, take a look at A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat. This picture book introduces us to blackberry fool and shows how it has been made over time. I had never appreciated an electric mixer so much before reading this and making my own blackberry fool with my children a few years ago! of also reflected on this book recently.

Summer reading programs

Libraries tend to have the best summer reading programs, but many more are out there. I searched for some of the best.

Half-Price Books: $5 store credit for kids age 14 or younger who read at least 300 minutes.

Barnes and Noble: A free book for 1^st-6^th graders who read 8 books and complete a reading journal.

The Second Lady’s Summer Reading Challenge: A certificate, a bookmark, and entrance into a lottery for a trip to DC for K-8^th grade students who read 12 books.

Pizza Hut Book-It: Personal pan pizza for kids Pre-K to 6^th grade who meet reading goals set by their parents.

And some Substackers have their own summer reading programs running, too! Take a look at the Summer Reading Challenge from and Summer Reading Bingo from .

Trivia Questions Scoring

If you got one question correct: You are Piglet, a loyal friend who appreciates good stories and recognizes quality work when he sees it, but whose exposure to literature is somewhat limited. Keep reading more books!

If you got two questions correct: You are Rabbit, an efficient fellow who knows more than most but needn’t be bothered with mastering all that pertains to book learning.

If you got three or four questions correct: Congratulations! You are Owl. Your knowledge is deep and ponderous and impressive. Feel free to celebrate by restacking this post (but don’t spoil any of the answers for others).

And yes, to clarify, in Winnie-the-Pooh, Rabbit can in fact read and write better than Owl, who cannot do either any better than my kindergartener. But I think it’s still clear that Owl has a deeper well of knowledge than does Rabbit; hence I’m giving Owl’s name to the higher score.

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We’ve come to the final round. Two remaining books will battle it out for the title of The Great American Picture Book.

The matchup: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel versus Blueberries for Sal.

Down from sixteen to the final two. Mike Mulligan and Blueberries for Sal: How can one choose?

It’s no secret that I was sad to see Miss Rumphius voted out in the first round, and farewelling Ox-Cart Man in the semifinals was hard, too. Alas for Barbara Cooney!

But also, I love these final two books. And in a way, the match-up feels right.

We’ve got two variants on the American dream, with an honest look at their downsides, too.

The Great American Picture Book

In Mike Mulligan, Virginia Lee Burton opens with industrialization, progress, and the dream of ever-increasing material wellbeing. It’s great! Look at what hardworking men and their steam shovels can do! But there are costs, including the near loss of Mike’s beloved steam shovel, Mary Anne.

It takes a virtuous man like Mike Mulligan to know when to walk away, when to go back to the smalltown values that made the American dream possible in the first place.

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But Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel isn’t a screed against cities, either. The little town of Popperville needs a little industrialization. After all, it would take a hundred men at least a week to dig the cellar of the new town hall, but Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne can do it in a day, so long as someone stays to watch.

The “stay and watch” theme is my favorite part of the book. That’s how it ought to be. A child should look over your shoulder, at least sometimes. We shouldn’t be totally atomized, segregated by age and vocation (necessary though that is sometimes). Children should be right there in the midst of society. And having a child looking over your shoulder should make you work a little harder and a little better.

Robert McCloskey zeroes in on this building block of American society: the family. Rather than a child’s look at an adult as in Mike Mulligan, Blueberries for Sal gives us a child’s look at another child. Sal and her mother are working together, picking blueberries for winter. Again, we’ve got a child right there in the midst of the work, watching and participating.

We’ve got the American themes of self-sufficiency, hard work, and planning ahead. But they’re softened by childhood. Sal is eating instead of saving, mostly playing instead of working, and wandering and getting lost instead of thinking ahead—and but for the scary mix-up with the bears, that’s just what she should be doing. Mother is very focused on storing food for winter (as she, a responsible mother, should be). And Sal is very focused on exploring the world (as she, a young child, should be).

But Sal is a little too exploratory, and Mother is a little too focused on her work, resulting in the famous parent exchange that makes up most of the plot. This is a universal tale of mothers and children, but in some ways it’s also a distinctly American tale. We Americans love to explore (sometimes a little too much) and we also love to work hard (also sometimes a little too much). Like Sal and her mother, we have to turn around and get back to the whole point of the work: family.

So which one is The Great American Picture Book? It’s hard to say, but the most American thing to do with the question is to vote on it.

What about these books do you love?

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What I’ve been reading

May ended and with it, our homeschool year. Here’s what I read in the last month, besides, you know, piles of picture books and approximately two thousand renditions of Peter Rabbit. (Anyone else have a child that gets really, really into a book?)

Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve: C.S. Lewis’s Images of Gender, by Joshua Herring

When Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia and runs into the faun Mr. Tumnus, he immediately recognizes her as “a Daughter of Eve” – though he has never met a human, let alone a girl. How?

I appreciated this opportunity to think more seriously about how C.S. Lewis portrays sex and gender. Herring walks through Lewis’s fiction to piece it all together. I reviewed Herring’s book for First Things.

Christians Reading Classics, by

Okay, I read this one in April, but my review of the book just came out yesterday at The Circe Institute blog. Christians Reading Classics tours more than a thousand years of ancient texts with an eye to how Christians can read even the pagans for virtue formation. Reading this made me want to get back into the originals, which is, after all, kind of the point of the book.

Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher Preachers, by Jean Fritz
Brady, by Jean Fritz
Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! by Jean Fritz

A trio of Jean Fritz books—some with my kids, some on my own to preview for them. Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! is the best of the three, a biography as fast-paced and exciting as its subject. I highly recommend it, though it does include some heavy moments, including the death of Teddy’s first wife.

I’ve said before that Jean Fritz is perhaps the best author of biographies for children, with a few exceptions. Her books are all over my America’s 250th list, in my list on “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and in my list of books that love books.

Fritz’s greats are truly great, and even her middling books are quite good. But when she misses (rare though this is), she misses badly. I’m working on an author profile on her, to come sometime this summer. None of the three books I read this month missed, though Harriet Beecher and the Beecher Preachers has some mature themes.

Ourselves, by Charlotte Mason

I had the privilege of reading through this volume alongside a group of women over the last ten months. We’ll meet tonight to discuss the last chapters and plan our schedule for next year. I’m so grateful for these women and the ways I’ve learned from and been encouraged by them.

I haven’t read all of Mason’s books, but so far, I wouldn’t rank this among Mason’s best work. Almost every other chapter I would exclaim to my husband, “C.S. Lewis said the same thing, only better!” Basically, if you read a lot of C.S. Lewis, you don’t need to read this one. But I still gleaned much wisdom and encouragement, and I added this convicting quote to my commonplace journal:

Great occasions do not come to us at any time of our lives; or if they do, they come in the guise of little matters every day. Let us be aware of this. The ‘great’ sphere for our Will is in ourselves. Our concern with life is to be fit, and according to our fitness come the occasions and the uses we shall be put to.

Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome

A bunch of kids messing about in boats and dead serious about it: this was our family read-aloud that we read seemingly nonstop on a recent camping trip. The book takes seriously all the things the kids are serious about. Plus the kids have incredible freedom and responsibility sailing around and camping on an island. Of course my kids loved it.

This was my first time through the book, and I got a little lost in all the boat terminology, but I did enjoy the book, and derived particular pleasure from the running subplot about the uncle writing a book.

“Captain Flint” (as the kids dub him) recently retired from world voyages to a houseboat, and this summer he doesn’t want to sail with the kids because he’s busy writing a book. “We’ve done everything we could to wake him up,” his niece complains. “We thought it wasn’t his fault to be writing a book, and that we would show him we didn’t think any worse of him for it.”

The kids keep pestering him to quit writing and come play. But he keeps writing, then loses his manuscript, and it’s the kids who rescue it. Captain Flint offers to buy an exotic animal as reward for one of the sailor children most responsible for his book’s recovery, setting up this remark on publishing:

I’ll see about it at once. There are monkeys nearer than Africa and I’m taking my book up to London now that I’ve got it again. I’ll go and look at monkeys by way of a change from publishers.

And by the end of the book, Captain Flint grumbles, “Don’t any of you start writing books. It isn’t worth it. This summer has been harder work for me than all the thirty years of knocking up and down that went before it.”

So, take it from Captain Flint. Maybe don’t write any more books.

Have you read Swallows and Amazons and what did you think of it?

And what are you reading right now?

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But before scrolling down to this week’s trivia questions, let’s vote once more. We’re in the semifinals of The Great American Picture Book contest.

This week four books were voted out: Corduroy (in a close race with The Ox-Cart Man), The Hat (farewell, Jan Brett!), The Runaway Bunny, and, in our Robert McCloskey match-up, Make Way for Ducklings. (The comments section last week had an extended discussion of why Blueberries for Sal may outlast Make Way for Ducklings. Give it a read!)

For today’s match-ups:

Trivia

And now for our bimonthly trivia questions. Today’s questions feature riddles, and they come from both picture books and chapter books.

Easy

This book features a riddle contest between two rivals who spout such puzzles as

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays kings, ruins town;
And beats high mountain down.

Medium

In this book, an impertinent youngster disrespects an island authority with riddles such as this:

Old Mr. B! Old Mr. B!
Hickamore, Hackamore, on the King’s kitchen door;
All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t drive Hickamore, Hackamore,
Off the King’s kitchen door.

Hard

In this book, four wanna-be-sailor children ask their father’s permission to go to sea, and receive this semi-enigmatic telegraph in reply:

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN

Bonus:

In this book, on a trip that reopens him to imagination, a boy meets a man who is as tall as can be, as short as can be, as generous as can be, as selfish as can be, as strong as can be, as weak as can be, as smart as can be, as stupid as can be, as graceful as can be, as clumsy as can be, as fast as can be, and as slow as can be.

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Scoring

If you got one question correct: You are Piglet, a loyal friend who appreciates good stories and recognizes quality work when he sees it, but whose reading is somewhat limited. Keep reading more books!

If you got two questions correct: You are Rabbit, an efficient fellow who knows more than most but needn’t be bothered with mastering all that pertains to book learning.

If you got three or four questions correct: Congratulations! You are Owl. Your knowledge is deep and ponderous and impressive. Feel free to celebrate by restacking this post (but don’t spoil any of the answers for others).

And yes, to clarify, in Winnie-the-Pooh, Rabbit can in fact read and write better than Owl, who cannot do either any better than my kindergartener. But I think it’s still clear that Owl has a deeper well of knowledge than does Rabbit; hence I’m giving Owl’s name to the higher score.

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If you enjoyed these trivia questions, would you share them a with a friend or restack here on Substack?

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First, a quick tribute to the fallen. This week we said farewell to Where the Wild Things Are, Miss Rumphius (this one is especially painful for me), Kitten’s First Full Moon, The Snowy Day, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, The Bee Tree, and Owl Moon.

Advancing on to round two are eight great picture books by Americans. The match-ups are a little more intense this week, including two Robert McCloskey books facing off against each other.

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Once you’ve had a chance to vote, let’s take a moment to get to know each other a bit.

There are so many new faces around here. Whether you’ve been part of The Hundred Acre Bookshelf from the beginning or have just recently joined, I would love to know: What are your favorite books? What does your current season of life look like? What’s something that’s bringing you joy?

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A little about me.

I’ll share a little more of my story, too.

First off, my name rhymes with “Michelle.”

Rachelle. Now you can be confident about your pronunciation.

I spent nine years in higher education reform and public policy, most of those in New York City. Now I’m back in my home state of Arizona with my husband and three kids, and I love getting to read much of the day as we homeschool.

I delight in the deserts of Arizona, but I’m not blind to the beauties of urban life, either. Never do I miss New York more than when I think of the museums and libraries. Pre-kids, my husband and I used to make a game of catching as many free museum days as we could. A couple years ago we returned to New York for a visit, and it was a special treat to take our children to some of the museums they were too young to remember when we lived there.

The New York Public Library is to thank for the name of this Substack, The Hundred Acre Bookshelf. Seeing Christopher Robin Milne’s original Winnie-the-Pooh there left a lasting impression on me, a story I told in an early post here.

I love trivia (hence our bimonthly literary trivia questions), so here’s a bit of trivia about me.

• My favorite authors are Jane Austen, Willa Cather, and the obvious ones: Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton.

• When I was five, my family took a road trip to every little house Laura Ingalls Wilder ever lived in. That vacation has never been surpassed.

• I once played the bagpipes on London Bridge. (Did you know London Bridge is in Arizona? I’m not kidding.)

• Once my husband and I walked the length of Manhattan in a day (14 miles). We called it our perambulatory half-marathon.

• I’ve been to 44 states and 4 continents, but I’m a big believer in rootedness.

• Rereading is, I think, the highest honor one can give a book.

So now, at least you know a bit more of who I am!

Now, your turn!

Please do comment or write back with a bit more of your story. I’d love to know more about you, too.

And for fun, let’s vote on a few questions of reading habits.

(I do have a strong opinion on this, but we can still be friends, even if we disagree.)

And finally….

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There are lots of possible answers to the question what does it mean to be an American? but one basic answer is we like to vote. So let’s vote: Is there an all-time greatest American picture book?

Huck Finn is often cited as The Great American Novel (though it got voted out pretty early in ’s recent poll). But what about The Great American Picture Book?

I asked last week for nominations, and several dozen of you wrote back. I took those suggestions, added my own, and built a list of sixteen possible contenders for the honor. (I almost said, “the title,” but the Constitution doesn’t permit titles of nobility, so let’s go for a different word.)

We’ve got beloved authors like Robert McCloskey and Virginia Lee Burton, and contemporaries like Jan Brett and Kevin Henkes. There are time-tested classics such as Miss Rumphius and Corduroy. Dr. Seuss is represented alongside Arnold Nobel. America has produced some pretty great authors and illustrators.

Now to the polls!

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I spent far too long trying to think of some way to model the vote on the Electoral College, or at least the Major League Baseball play-offs, but they’re just too clunky for this purpose. And since basketball was invented at the YMCA, perhaps you actually can’t get more American than to use a Sweet 16-style bracket.

Come back next week for round two! In the meantime, leave a comment making the case for why your favorite book is the best.

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America only turns 250 once, and although my kids may well be here for her 300^th birthday (and I’m hoping to be here, too), they’ll only be kids for this one, so we’re going all out. We’re gearing up to sign our facsimile Declaration of Independence on July 4^th. (We “signed” —really, sealed with wax—the Magna Carta last year, too.) We got our tricorn hat out. I shared a few weeks ago about our family effort to memorize “Paul Revere’s Ride.” We’re excited!

The books are where the real excitement lives. Books shape our imagination and feed our mind. They give us the material on which our minds can rest and ponder. Books have sparked more than a few imaginative play sessions in my house, most recently many re-enactments of Paul Revere’s ride.

At the end of this post I’m sharing a list of 50+ children’s books in honor of America’s 250^th birthday. But first, I want to share a few thoughts on why such books matter.

Something to keep

In Little Town on the Prairie, seventh in the famous “Little House” series, Laura Ingalls and her classmates prepare for a school exhibition. The new teacher Mr. Owen, a young but firm man who expects and usually gets excellence from his students, has the idea to have the students recite before the whole town—or at least as many of them as want to come, and nearly all of them do.

Laura and her friend Ida have the task of retelling American history from Christopher Columbus to Rutherford B. Hayes. They have pictures of each president on the wall but nothing more, just their memories.

Laura goes first, telling in a shaky but gradually steadying voice of 1492, of Spanish and French explorers, Raleigh’s lost colony, the English in Virginia and Massachusetts, the Dutch in New York. Then the Declaration of Independence, the battles of the American Revolution, the drafting of the Constitution, and the life story of George Washington. She gives a play-by-play of the presidencies of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, then hands off to Ida, who takes the audience from Andrew Jackson to Hayes, who was president at the time.

It’s a remarkable feat. (Laura does more, too, like parsing sentences aloud and dividing six-digit numbers in her head.) It’s remarkable, of course, that two normal high school students in the 1880s knew their nation’s story so intimately. And it’s remarkable that the majority of the town would crowd the local church to listen to such recitations as their entertainment.

It’s remarkable for another reason. Laura and her classmates had hardly any books. They had just a few, but they were all good.

Books tell a nation’s story, and Laura herself, of course, wrote several that tell part of our national story. Laura was born in 1867, on the cusp of the golden age of children’s literature (1860s-1920s) and just as American literature was truly coming into its own. Tom Sawyer would be published in 1876, Huckleberry Finn in 1885. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick came out in 1851, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was writing poetry all the way up until his death in 1882.

Laura had limited access to these books, though it’s clear she treasured every book she owned or borrowed. Today we have even more candidates for books that tell our nation’s story. But we don’t always know them or treasure them.

I’ve seen several Semiquincentennial book lists going around. Some are excellent, others less so. (And I didn’t plagiarize – I made my own list.)

But what’s striking to me is that almost all of the lists I’ve seen have been put forward by individual people, just as I’m doing. I’m glad to see individuals take a civic interest in sharing great books about our country, and probably, like me, these book listers get joy out of doing so.

But there’s not much from, say, the Library of Congress or the American Library Association by way of book lists. The closest thing to a book list is the TV series “Reading Road Trip” from the Library of Congress and PBS, a low-budget effort to profile books and authors from different states. The American Association of School Librarians has one blog post by one librarian giving her personal picks. The White House Teacher Institute has a single book recommendation, written by a fifth grader. Isn’t it a little odd that our official organizations tasked with promoting American reading don’t have much to say about books for our Semiquincentennial?

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To be an American

There’s no shortage of great children’s books that wrestle with what it means to be an American. Not just to be someone who happened to be born here, or happened to immigrate here. Nor, on the other extreme, to have merged one’s identity with the fate of the nation. But to be intentional about calling oneself an American, and to see her ideals as some way bound up in one’s own. To be an American, to be shaped in some way by the country that we call our own.

Caddie Woodlawn, another pioneer tale, asks more pointedly what – if anything – constitutes the American identity. Caddie’s father came from England, the son of a wealthy nobleman who lost his inheritance when he married beneath his class. In poverty Caddie’s father came to the American Midwest, where neither social class nor money mattered, just character and hard work. This is where Caddie grew up and where she loves to roam free with her brothers.

When a letter comes offering to reinstate his inheritance and noble title on condition of renouncing American citizenship, Mr. Woodlawn turns to his family for an open debate and a family vote. Even the littlest votes, with the same weight as Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn themselves. The point comes across beautifully: not to denounce England (now America’s friend and ally) but to probe the depths of the doctrine of American equality.

So, too, do books like Sounder, William H. Armstrong’s Newbery Medal-winning tale of life under Jim Crow. Armstrong puts us deep in sharecropping territory, a land marked by closed opportunity, where black characters are nameless but portrayed vividly, in contrast to small-minded race bigots who have titles but no character. Armstrong never directly addresses American identity. Like all else in the book, his messages are layered deep under intricate storytelling and powerful narratives that show, never tell. But we come away with a clear picture of America’s serious shortfalls and yet its incredible promise.

A literary salute

The shortfalls and the promise: we need to hear both. Indeed, there would be no shortfalls were there not an existing ideal from which to fall. America is not perfect, but she is worth honoring.

America is about to turn 250 years old. As my small offering in honor of this milestone, I’m sharing my list of books to salute America’s birthday.

These are books that love America, that present her as a place worthy of honor without shying away from her faults. They’re clear-eyed but not cynical. They love the United States for who she is and what her founding ideals desire, but they also recognize her failures and flaws.

I include a section on biographies, focused not on famous people who just happened to be Americans, but on people who helped shape what America is.

These are also living books that tell a story. They are not didactic. They are not catechisms of American exceptionalism. They are not owned by any political party. They are written by authors who, if they disclose their politics at all, identify with several different political parties, but all of them love their country and tell a true and worthy story about her.

Books tell a nation’s story, and we the people have quite a story to tell.

As always, every book I list is a book I’ve read in whole. Please add your recommendations in the comments. I include Amazon affiliate links below. You can also see my complete list at Bookshop.org.

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Picture books

The American Speller, by Noah Webster, illustrated by Barbara Cooney
A slightly updated version of Webster’s 1783 Blue-Backed Speller, with all the original American wit and wisdom and delightful Cooney illustrations.

Betsy Ross, by Becky White, illustrated by Megan Lloyd
My favorite part: the illustrations are sewn! Get ready to cut out your own Betsy Ross stars using the tutorial at the end.

Sleds on Boston Common, by Louise Borden, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker
While the British blockade Boston, some American children bring out a kinder side of their British occupiers, convincing General Gage to let them sled.

George Washington’s Breakfast, by Jean Fritz
A curious boy wants to know: What did George Washington eat? He sets off to find out, and learns quite a lot about our first president but also about how to search for knowledge.

Our Colonial Year, by Cheryl Harness
A look at the thirteen colonies month by month. (Read more of my thoughts on this book in one of the first posts I wrote about books through the year.)

When Washington Crossed the Delaware, by Lynne Cheney
The famous tale of courage and fortitude brought to life.

By The Dawn’s Early Light, by Steven Kroll
Tells of the birth of our national anthem, complete with beautiful painted illustrations.

The Ox-Cart Man, by Donald Hall, illustrated by Barbara Cooney
A testament to the American work ethic. (I shared more about this book here.)

January’s Sparrow, by Patricia Polacco
A story from the Underground Railroad, with some intense, mature moments.

Pink and Say, by Patricia Polacco
A story from the Civil War.

Fiona’s Lace, by Patricia Polacco
The true tale of Irish immigrants.

The Blessing Cup, by Patricia Polacco
A story of Eastern European Jewish immigrants.

The Keeping Quilt, by Patricia Polacco
The companion to The Blessing Cup above. Patricia Polacco is a master of the American immigrant story (most of them the true stories of her own ancestors).

Chapter books

The Sign of the Beaver, by Elizabeth George Speare
A young man learns independence and self-reliance from an unexpected source.

Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes
The story of the American Revolution as told through a young Boston silversmith.

Guns for General Washington, by Seymour Reit
The ultimate tale of American grit and perseverance: The Knox Expedition brings cannons 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, making their own roads as they go.

Poor Richard’s Almanack, by Benjamin Franklin
Ben Franklin’s wit and wisdom with woodcut illustrations.

Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink
As I described above, Caddie Woodlawn is perhaps the children’s book to most forthrightly wrestle with what it means to be an American.

Amos Fortune, Free Man, by Elizabeth Yates
A prince in Africa, Amos is captured by slave traders and spends decades in slavery before achieving freedom again in the United States.

Across Five Aprils, by Irene Hunt
A story of a young Civil War combatant.

A Pioneer Sampler, by Barbara Greenwood
An introduction to pioneer life, complete with recipes and crafts.

Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (and the whole series)
Need I say more? America’s most famous pioneer family heads West. The Fourth of July chapter in Farmer Boy is particularly apropos.

Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan (and the whole series)
More tales of pioneer life, with a focus on the importance of women.

Little Britches, by Ralph Moody
A young boy takes on ranching with his dad in a true story that reads a bit like a male version of Little House on the Prairie. (Some profanity.)

Sounder, by William H. Armstrong
A tale of sharecropping and Jim Crow.

Board Books

Books for littles that tell some small bit of an American story.

Cozy Classics: Moby Dick, by Jack and Holman Wang

Cozy Classics: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Jack and Holman Wang

Cozy Classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Jack and Holman Wang

Picture Book Biographies

Heroes of the Revolution, by David A. Adler
Twelve one-page biographies of early American heroes, some famous, some not.

Benjamin Franklin, by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
A fascinating ride through Franklin’s life and inventions.

The Remarkable Benjamin Franklin, by Cheryl Harness
Cheryl Harness comes up frequently here, painting lively portraits in art and in words. This biography hints at Franklin’s moral indiscretions but in a way that is appropriate for children.

George Washington, by Cheryl Harness
A good look at our first president, with stunning paintings.

George Washington, by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
Another look at George Washington, with a little more focus on his childhood.

A Picture Book of Alexander Hamilton, by David Adler
What a life had Alexander Hamilton! Here we get a quick introduction to this extraordinary founding father.

The Revolutionary John Adams, by Cheryl Harness
Harness includes quotes from John and Abigail Adams’s letters and diaries at the bottom of each page.

A Picture Book of John and Abigail Adams, by David Adler
A little more on this famous marriage.

Thomas Jefferson, by Cheryl Harness
Another great biography from Cheryl Harness. It references Sally Hemmings a few times.

Young John Quincy, by Cheryl Harness
John Quincy Adams grew up during the American Revolution and accompanied his father on much of his work.

A Picture Book of Harriet Tubman, by David Adler
A true story of courage on the Underground Railroad.

Young Abe Lincoln, by Cheryl Harness
Part 1 of Harness’s biography looks at Abraham Lincoln’s impoverished childhood.

Abe Lincoln Goes to Washington, by Cheryl Harness
Part 2 takes us through Lincoln’s assassination.

Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln, by Jean Fritz
The story of the Gettysburg Address written for about a 2^nd grade reader.

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr., by David Adler
A look at the Civil Rights Movement through the life and work of Dr. King.

Chapter Book Biographies

Why Don’t You Get a Horse, Sam Adams? By Jean Fritz
Jean Fritz will come up frequently here – she’s a master of the biography for children.

What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? By Jean Fritz
Another lively look at an early American.

Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29^th of May? by Jean Fritz
Patrick Henry’s famous rhetoric comes through in this biography.

And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? by Jean Fritz
Paul Revere in his old age loved to tell the story of his famous ride, and Fritz gives us the same enthusiasm.

Will You Sign Here, John Hancock? by Jean Fritz
Not shying away from the vanity or other less virtuous motivations, Fritz gives another lively portrait of a famous early American.

Buttons for General Washington, by Peter and Connie Roop
The story of a young American spy, written for a 2^nd or 3^rd grade reader.

The Great Little Madison, by Jean Fritz
Beside biography, it’s also the story of perseverance.

Lincoln: A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman
One of the few works of nonfiction to win a Newbery Medal.

Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life, by David A. Adler
Adler is known for picture book biographies, but this is a chapter book.

Poems

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, illustrated by Christopher Bing
The original text of the famous poem with engravings. Our family used this copy to memorize the poem, as I shared here.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost, illustrated by Susan Jeffers
A classic poem paired with great art – who could resist? I shared more about this copy in our February book list.

Casey at the Bat, by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, illustrated by Patricia Polacco
Who could better illustrate this famous bit of Americana?

Over the River and Through the Wood, by Lydia Marie Child, illustrated by Christopher Manson
Another famous American poem that really comes to life with the art.

The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children’s Poems, edited by Donald Hall
This anthology gets constant use over here.

Note: Some publisher needs to bring out a good illustrated version of “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus and “The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There’s a real market gap here. If you’re a publisher, please take note!

You can also see this complete list at Bookshop.org.

There it is! My book list for America’s 250^th birthday.

What have you been reading with your family? What books would you add?

P.S. Is there such a thing as The Great American Picture Book? I’ll say more on this next week, but I’d love to know what books you would nominate.

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Do you recognize the book? Take a guess.

(The answer, by the way, is here.)

So for this week’s trivia questions, I thought it would be fun to have a series of images, the answers, if you will, to the unstated titles. How many can you identify?

Easy

When you’re ready, see the answer here.

Medium

The answer is here.

Hard

This is one of my favorite illustrators. When you’re ready, see the answer here.

Bonus

Can you identify this book?

Double-check this one! See the answer here.

Scoring

If you got one question correct: You are Piglet, a loyal friend who appreciates good stories and recognizes quality work when he sees it, but whose exposure to literature is somewhat limited. Keep reading more books!

If you got two questions correct: You are Rabbit, an efficient fellow who knows more than most but needn’t be bothered with mastering all that pertains to book learning.

If you got three or four questions correct: Congratulations! You are Owl. Your knowledge is deep and ponderous and impressive. Feel free to celebrate by restacking this post (but don’t spoil any of the answers for others).

And yes, in Winnie-the-Pooh, Rabbit can in fact read and write better than Owl, who cannot do either any better than my kindergartener. But I think it’s still clear that Owl has a deeper well of knowledge than does Rabbit; hence I’m giving Owl’s name to the higher score.

This post contains affiliate links.

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Those words came true for me recently, as my children cozied round and I read aloud from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classic poem. It was the 18^th of April, not of ’75, but 2026, 251 years to the day after Revere’s famous ride.

Like many, our family has been reading extra American history and folklore to celebrate the Semiquincentennial. We read the Declaration of Independence, including the long train of abuses, which my son found almost more interesting than the famous parts. We pulled out the biographies of founding fathers and dusted off some American classics. We even made it through the Constitution. Parts were a slog but the kids picked up far more than I expected and, to my great surprise, wanted to know in great detail how the electoral college worked. We tried Federalist 10, but I’m sorry, James Madison, you just aren’t great as a family read-aloud.

The Declaration of Independence was pretty exciting, not least of all because I’ve printed a copy that each kid is going to sign on July 4^th. They know this is coming, so the anticipation builds. (We’re also cooking period food. At the end of this post I’ll share some recipes.)

But Paul Revere has been the most imagination-forming so far. The drama, the clear narrative arc, the petticoat-wrapped oars, the danger. The horse! The lanterns!

We read some biographies and other retellings of Paul Revere’s ride, but to be sure Longfellow’s poem is what sealed my kids’ interest. We enjoy memorizing long poems as a family, a few stanzas per person, so next up we’re tackling this one. But this famous poem is a dramatic ride for anyone, whether you’re naturally inclined toward poetry or not.

This weekend as we re-read the poem, my children and I, we were right there with Paul Revere. We watched him get up in the middle of the night, whispering to his friend about lantern codes, and saw him row across the Charles River past British warships. Historians aren’t sure if it was sexton Robert Newman or vestryman Captain John Pulling Jr. who hung the lanterns – Longfellow discreetly mentions merely “his friend” – but whoever it was, we climbed the North Church tower with him and saw him hang the famed two lanterns to warn that the British were coming by sea.

We heard the village clock strike 1 AM as Paul Revere rode into Lexington. Longfellow says “the fate of a nation was riding that night.” We felt that weight as we read.

This is what poetry does. It transports you to another time and place, but then it also makes you feel the significance of what happened. The phrasing is different from normal speech, indicating that this is communicating something special. Rhythm and rhyme make the details stick in your mind, so that you more clearly remember not just the lanterns and the horse-riding, but the courage and the energy and the power. Not just of Paul Revere—though Longfellow lauds him greatly—but of all the brave men: “And one was safe and asleep in his bed / who at the bridge would be first to fall.”

Longfellow’s poem doesn’t purport to be scrupulous history. For one thing, Revere wasn’t the only rider that night. And he didn’t complete his trip. He got waylaid by British troops just outside of Lexington and spent much of the night in captivity. Longfellow may claim that “It was two by the village clock / When he came to the bridge in Concord town,” but Revere didn’t make it there. He was released on foot early the next morning just as the battle began.

Nor does Longfellow give us much context. He assumes we already know why the British were marching (to capture stockpiled American weapons) and he was confident that everyone knew the details of the battle. “You know the rest. In the books you have read / How the British regular fired and fled…” He doesn’t bear the historian’s burden to put it all plainly.

That’s why I’m a big fan of memorizing poetry and studying history. We need the actual facts of what happened, but we also need to grasp the spirit of what went on and why. We need to know the names of the actors but also who these men and women were and the spirits that animated them. We need poetry to communicate ethos and gravity. We need history to keep us grounded in truth.

We need poetry and history, hand in hand.

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Books about Paul Revere

Here are some of the books and resources we’ve enjoyed on Paul Revere and his famous ride. I may earn a commission on purchases through my affiliate links.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, illustrated by Christopher Bing (picture book)

I’m always a fan of a poem turned into a picture book. So long as the text is faithfully rendered, adding quality illustrations opens up the poem for tiny readers and enhances everyone else’s sense of what’s happening.

I like this edition because Bing not only illustrates beautifully but also includes facsimiles of key historical documents.

And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? by Jean Fritz (chapter book)

I’ve said before that Jean Fritz is the queen of biographies for children (though a few miss the mark). I’m close to having read all of her books, at which point I will write an author profile on her.

This is my favorite children’s biography of Revere. Don’t let the hokey cover illustration throw you off! Fritz captures Revere’s quick, eager spirit and still gives us all the facts (including setting Longfellow straight on a few counts). This is a short chapter book, written at about a 4^th grade reading level.

Mr. Revere and I, by Robert Lawson (chapter book)

I have to include a few words about this book, because it appears on nearly every recommended reading list. This book is a decent read if you start about four chapters in. If you want just one book on Paul Revere, buy the Jean Fritz biography above.

Robert Lawson is a good author, and I like everything else I’ve read by him. But this is not his best. Lawson does give us a lively portrait of Revere and a good sense of the historical context surrounding his ride. But the early chapters consist of nothing more than ridicule of the British, who are presented as such bumbling idiots that an American victory seems hardly worth celebrating. Besides being unfair and untrue, we lose all sense of the significance of the American victory, which is, after all, what the book is supposed to be about.

Sleds on Boston Common, by Louise Borden, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker (picture book)

In contrast to Mr. Revere and I, here we have quite a gentlemanly portrayal of the British, who though they are occupying Boston, nevertheless clear some space in their Boston Commons encampment to let the American children sled.

Nothing about Paul Revere here, but a nice look at the context in which he was riding.

“Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The phrase “the shot heard ‘round the world” originates here, in this excellent poem commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord.

I’m not aware of a picture book version of this poem. Hark, publishers – please bring out a well-illustrated edition of this poem!

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Costumes

We don’t always wear costumes (this is not my skillset), but usually my kids will come up with something, and in this case, we actually own a few relevant pieces, including a colonial dress sewed by my very talented sister.

I highly recommend a tricorn hat! We’ve gotten much usage from ours, which will only get more wear leading up to July 4^th.

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Early American food

Next week our family is going to attempt to collectively recite the entirety of “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and in celebration we’ll be eating early American dishes.

Our family will be cooking from American Cookery, a cookbook by Amelia Simmons published in 1796 and archived online for free. We haven’t fully determined our menu yet, but here are a few tidbits of early American cooking advice:

• “Garlicks, those used by the French, are better adapted to the uses of medicine than cookery.” Yikes.

• On choosing carrots: “The yellow are better than the orange or the red.” Okay?

Some, ah, interesting recipes that we will not be eating

• Turtle (must be butchered at 9 o’clock, apparently) – page 22 in the PDF

• Foot pie – page 24

• Tongue pie – page 25

Publishing was evidently quite the raucous endeavor in the late 1700s. Our recipe author Amelia Simmons includes this note about a rogue editor who apparently doubled, halved, and other swapped ingredients in the cookbook’s first edition as some kind of mean joke.

The author of the American Cookery, not having an education sufficient to prepare the work for the press, the person that was employed by her and entrusted with the receipts, to prepare them for publication (with a design to impose on her, and injure the sale of the book) did omit several articles very essential in some of the receipts, and placed others in their stead, which were highly injurious to them, without her consent.

Fortunately we have the second edition to cook from.

If you enjoyed these ideas on bringing history to life, I’ll write on more historical events from time to time. Coming on May 5 is my larger booklist for America’s Semiquincentennial.

What are your favorite ways to bring history to life? What books do you recommend on Paul Revere or the American founding?

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This week’s clues focus on onomatopoeia, the formation of a word from the sound of its subject.

One of the superpowers of motherhood is the ability to recognize the significance of sounds. We hear the swish of small fingers unrolling the toilet paper, the shuffle of someone wearing Daddy’s muddy shoes indoors, the distinct cry of a baby waking up happy versus sad, and we know within a split-second what is going on.

And the sound of silence? Usually we can intuit what that might mean, too.

Our books today use onomatopoeia. All of them are picture books.

Picture book onomatoepoeia

Easy: Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk goes the pail. See answer here.

Medium: Squelch squerch squelch squerch go this family’s feet. See answer here.

Hard: Wasawusu wasawusu comes the python to the animal council, where he shifts blame to another. See answer here.

Bonus: Sometimes I feel like this character, going “lippity lippity, not very fast.” See answer here.

This post includes affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through my link.

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Scoring

If you got one question correct: You are Piglet, a loyal friend who appreciates good stories and recognizes quality work when he sees it, but whose exposure to literature is somewhat limited. Keep reading more books!

If you got two questions correct: You are Rabbit, an efficient fellow who knows more than most but needn’t be bothered with mastering all that pertains to book learning.

If you got three or four questions correct: Congratulations! You are Owl. Your knowledge is deep and ponderous and impressive. Feel free to celebrate by restacking this post (but don’t spoil any of the answers for others).

And yes, to clarify, in Winnie-the-Pooh, Rabbit can in fact read and write better than Owl, who cannot do either any better than my kindergartener. But I think it’s still clear that Owl has a deeper well of knowledge than does Rabbit; hence I’m giving Owl’s name to the higher score.

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Do you know someone who loves great books? Please recommend The Hundred Acre Bookshelf to others!

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There he meets Rat, and there he enters his first boat, and there they mess about on the water and row ashore for a picnic and talk of Mr. Badger and become fast friends. By chapter 2, now summertime, Mole and Rat are off on trips and visits involving Mr. Toad and Mr. Badger and beginning their true adventures.

The Wind in the Willows takes us through all four seasons, but it begins in spring, and in my mind it will always be a spring story. Mole and Rat owe all their subsequent exploits to springtime, that shimmery sliver of the seasons that beckons and calls to us with something bordering on the beatific. Mole was dutifully cleaning when spring spoke to him and lured him outside.

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

“Divine discontent and longing.” I wonder if C.S. Lewis ever recalled this scene when he was writing Surprised by Joy and talking about sehnsucht. It’s a fitting description of sehnsucht, joy so piercing as to be painful, pain so beautiful as to become joy. Lewis’s life was marked by these episodes, from childhood on. Eventually in adulthood these stabs of not-quite-fulfilled beauty accumulated to fill the hollow of his atheism and demonstrate the truth of the Gospel.

Spring offers an especially powerful type of sehnsucht, I think, because we get a foretaste of a yet-unfulfilled promise: that one day all things will be made new. For now, at least, it seems all things really are made new, and we only wish they would last.

Lewis himself made that connection in verse:

What the Bird Said Early in the Year

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.
This year time’s nature will no more defeat you.
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.
This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well worn track.

Each year brings a new promise of fulfillment, the enthralling prospect that as surely as spring buds give way to the fruit of summer, so summer “will come true” – will come to fruition that lasts this time. But then summer leads back around to Autumn, like a “well worn track,” and we start the cycle anew.

Yet the promise isn’t futile, and Lewis tells us this too. The place Lewis set his poem, Addison’s Walk, is the scene of his first steps toward Christianity – the springtime of his conversion, if you will. He traversed Addison’s Walk until midnight one night, walking with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, discussing whether Christianity might be the one true myth, the true story all the ancient tales anticipated, the ultimate dying and rising foretold in the seasons themselves. Though the earth has not yet been made new, in Christ we can be made new, and this already-but-not-yet conundrum speaks of the juxtaposition of springtime’s promise and its impermanence.

Mole and Rat don’t get all the way to the Gospel in The Wind in the Willows, though they do stumble into Pan, a kind of beast-god, a deity incarnate for a world of animals. Still, it’s no surprise that The Wind in the Willows was one of Lewis’s favorites. He remarked in his essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” that “I never met The Wind in the Willows…’till I was in my late twenties, and I do not think I have enjoyed [it] any the less on that account.”

Part of Lewis’s love for Kenneth Grahame’s story is surely the prevalence of “dressed animals.” Lewis loved animals that behave as humans, and his early fiction writing as a child involved his make-believe world of Boxen inhabited by busy animals who of course wear clothes.

Part is due to Grahame’s creative juxtaposition of “the sort of freedom we can have only in childhood and the sort we can have only in maturity,” as Lewis wrote of The Wind in the Willows in “On Three Ways of Writing for Children.” Rat and Mole have the carefree spirit of children but the privileges of adulthood, and they inhabit a world that seems almost ageless. There are some children, and Mr. Badger seems clearly a senior figure, but the world of The Wind in the Willows is a bit like Aslan’s Country in The Last Battle: As Lucy, Edmund, and the rest go “further up and further in,” swimming up waterfalls and playing like children, Professor Kirk and Tirian and all the older generation seem to become younger until everyone has almost no age at all. Might it be a permanent springtime they’re suspended in?

But the “divine discontent” of spring must be a major source of Lewis’s enjoyment of The Wind in the Willows.

It certainly is for me.

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More spring stories

Picture books can capture glimmers of this divine discontent, perhaps leaning more towards the joy than the pain of sehnsucht. Here are a few favorites for the season. (Our March list had some spring books, too.) I may earn a small commission on purchases through my affiliate links below.

Brambly Hedge: Spring Story, by Jill Barklem

Brambly Hedge offers art reminiscent of Beatrix Potter, storylines that evoke scenes from The Wind in the Willows, and characters that, were they not mice, would make very nice hobbits.

This is a town of industrious but jolly garden-loving mice who delight in merry-making. Their vigor for play is impressive. They love good food and drink and yearn for the outdoor world.

Like Rat and Mole, these are carefree but mature animals. They go where they please, eat what they want, drop in on each other for spontaneous visits, lollygag by the stream, and still manage to have entire Store Stumps filled with delicious dishes. I wish my larder could mimic Brambly Hedge’s.

In this story, young Wilfred has a birthday and the whole town gathers for a spontaneous picnic. All the adults must have, at some previous time, carefully worked and saved and stored up food, but now they cast aside their work for vigorous play, leading up to a pleasant surprise for Wilfred at the end.

C.S. Lewis would love the abundance of “dressed animals.”

Flower Fairies of the Spring, by Cicely Mary Barker

Cicely Mary Barker invites us to see the magic of the natural world, and her whole series is a delight, though this springtime collection is my favorite of her books. Barker presents 20 flowers reimagined as fairies in both a poem and a painting.

The poems glimpse some characteristic feature of each flower. The dandelion is stubborn. The daisy is playful. Then the art presents to us each fairy clothed in his or her respective flower. One of the chief delights in this book is the imaginative romp through anthropomorphized nature as we see petals and sepals and seeds and leaves turned into clothes for each fairy to wear.

The art and the words are delights in themselves, but for they offer many practical values, too. What better way to learn your flowers and trees? (Please, some fellow Arizonan, write something in this vein for the desert.) And each poem is short, making an especially delightful choice for memorization.

Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey

Mr. and Mrs. Mallard have searched far and wide for a nesting site, and nothing quite suits Mrs. Mallard’s fancy. Eventually they find a suitable spot along the Charles River where Mrs. Mallard can lay her eggs, and when Mr. Mallard goes on a trip, Mrs. Mallard arranges to meet him in the Public Garden, all eight ducklings in tow.

The only problem is that the Garden is in the middle of Boston, and Mrs. Mallard will need some help to get her carefully trained line of ducklings across traffic.

It’s a beautiful story of family, a tribute to the city of Boston, and, though Robert McCloskey probably didn’t imagine this application, a little encouragement for moms in the early years of parenting. Mrs. Mallard raises eight ducklings and dares to take them all out in public on her own. Impressive!

Winner of the Caldecott, the official children’s book of the state of Massachusetts, this classic is probably already on your shelf.

But did you know that Robert McCloskey found it necessary to live with ducks in order to draw Mr. and Mrs. Mallard? Mr. McCloskey’s Marvelous Mallards tells the lively story behind the book, and the great lengths to which McCloskey went in order to get his illustrations right. As a bit of author lore it’s fun, and it’s also a timely reminder that good things are hard to do.

Cactus Hotel by Brenda Guiberson, illustrated by Megan Lloyd

I live in Arizona, and I’ve got to include one book that more accurately shows what springtime looks like here. Even if you do not live where saguaro thrive, you, too, can appreciate this life-story of the saguaro cactus.

A saguaro grows incredibly slowly, not growing its first arm until about 70 years old, and often living for 200 years. So don’t fear if you, like the saguaro, have many decades under your belt but haven’t begun all you hope to accomplish.

The saguaro relies on a nurse plant to thrive and in its lifetime, it in turn becomes home for innumerable creatures. Even if you don’t live in Arizona, this is a well-illustrated, fascinating nature study.

The Wind Blew, by Pat Hutchins

The wind blows everything, one item at a time, one page at a time, until a coterie of the wind-robbed chase their lost belongings, all to great humor. The rhymes and short sentences per page make this a top choice for young kids just graduating out of board books.

Mossy, by Jan Brett

An Eastern box turtle carries a garden swaying atop her carapace, attracting the attention of both a handsome male turtle and a scientist who wants Mossy for her museum. Jan Brett’s illustrations are, as always, intricate and lovely, with lots of good models for your own nature drawing.

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What are you reading in April?

And what books give you a sense of the “divine discontent” of spring?

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In honor of this holiday on the 1^st of April, and because democracy is always the surest way to determine excellence, I present to you: a poll.

In this special edition of The Hundred Acre Bookshelf, please help us determine: Which of these esteemed characters best represents the moral exemplar our children ought to emulate?

As Charlotte Mason said in Ourselves, “We want a wider range of knowledge than the life about us affords, and books are our best teachers.” Behold, three top contenders for the title of “Best Moral Literary Exemplar of the Millennium.”

Option 1: Mr. Toad

The hero of The Wind in the Willows, Mr. Toad is bold, dashing, and rich. He wears fashionable clothes. He is an early adopter of modern technology (namely, the motorcar). He executes adept escapes from danger. As he says of himself in his charming song, “The clever men at Oxford know all that there is to be knowed, but they none of them know one half as much as intelligent Mr. Toad.”

Into our national epidemic of low self-esteem bounds Mr. Toad with just the bravado our youth need.

Option 2: The White Witch

The original girlboss, the White Witch (or Jadis, as she might prefer we call her) assures us that a woman can indeed run a country. She runs it so well and so thoroughly that social upheaval (and even weather upheaval) become unheard of…mostly. Of course, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe she is maligned by Aslan, but so it is with any brave woman who cracks the glass ceiling.

And did we add that she is deeply devoted to justice?

Option 3: Gollum

The only mortal strong enough to own the One Ring for hundreds of years, Gollum is a picture of tenacity. No one delights as he does in his personal possessions (rather, possession, as there really is just one thing he claims ownership of). A flexible fellow who can adapt to circumstances while keeping steely grip on his unwavering goal, Gollum represents the kind of mind-numbing perseverance necessary for our children to succeed in the modern American school system. Really, where would Bilbo be in The Hobbit if not for Gollum?

Now vote, vote, vote! Our recognition of merit depends on it.

In order to achieve the best picture of merit possible, do share this post with others. As James Madison said in Federalist 10, only a large republic of voters can protect against factions. All must vote.

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And perhaps you know of a better role model? Feel free to write your own in the comments. We can never have too many superstars for our children to idolize.

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Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day, so these questions ask us to think back on some of the great pranks of children’s literature. Maybe they’ll inspire you for tomorrow, or perhaps they’ll merely provoke a smile.

None of the pranks below is specifically an April Fool’s Day joke, but they’re silly and quirky and, like all true pranks, they’re done (mostly) for the fun of it. Some turn out to be rather mean and become learning opportunities for our young heroes and heroines. Others are just side-slapping funny and earn the doer praise and cheers from onlookers and participants.

All of the books today are chapter books.

Also, be sure to watch your email for a special edition of The Hundred Acre Bookshelf tomorrow.

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“The Children of Nathan Starr” by Ambrose Andrews. They’ve got sufficiently serious poker faces to cover up any number of pranks.

Literary Pranks

Easy: When a ladylike cousin from Boston arrives to visit the frontier, this titular character and her brothers slip an egg down her back and send her out to the sheep, who eat the precious eighty-and-eight buttons off her dress. Answer here.

Medium: This large family tends to gang up on would-be sweethearts of the older sisters, and when Ernestine brings home a young man for a few days’ visit, her younger brothers go all in. They use up the hot water, leave the bathroom window open in winter, and take a screwdriver to the doorknob to prevent it from locking. When Al is freezing in the tub, they take turns walking in on him, sometimes dressed in girls’ attire. It turns out Al does not love Ernestine enough to outlast these pranks. Answer here.

Hard: By sneaking one unshorn sheep up to the barn loft, a young boy manages to get all the fleeces upstairs before the men finish shearing, thereby winning a race. Answer.

Bonus: When her child is kidnapped, this mother pranks the would-be-kidnapper, treating him as her lost son and subjecting him to a bath, medicine, and an early bedtime. Answer here.

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Scoring

If you got one question correct: You are Piglet, a loyal friend who appreciates good stories and recognizes quality work when he sees it, but whose exposure to literature is somewhat limited. Keep reading more books!

If you got two questions correct: You are Rabbit, an efficient fellow who knows more than most but needn’t be bothered with mastering all that pertains to book learning.

If you got three or four questions correct: Congratulations! You are Owl. Your knowledge is deep and ponderous and impressive. Feel free to celebrate by restacking this post (but don’t spoil any of the answers for others).

And yes, to clarify, in Winnie-the-Pooh, Rabbit can in fact read and write better than Owl, who cannot do either any better than my kindergartener. But I think it’s still clear that Owl has a deeper well of knowledge than does Rabbit; hence I’m giving Owl’s name to the higher score.

Sharing

If you enjoyed these trivia questions, would you share them a with a friend or restack here on Substack?

And do tell: What are some the funniest moments in children’s literature? Please share in the comments.

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March 25^th (tomorrow) is, in Tolkien’s world, the day when all began to be made well. The Ring was destroyed in the Crack of Doom. Sauron fell. Gondor changed its calendar to start the new year here. Fittingly, The Tolkien Society celebrates an annual Tolkien Reading Day on the 25^th of March.

March 25^th is also the date held by tradition to be, in the real world, the crucifixion of Jesus. By this it is possible for man to be reconciled to God, and by this one day all things on earth will be set right.

The depth of imagery in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium is incredible. The Fellowship sets out on December 25th. The ring is destroyed on Good Friday. Sauron and his ilk cannot make anything but can only corrupt pre-existing cities, buildings, people – just as there is no such thing as evil incarnate, only good things corroded and eaten away into evil form.

Many have explored these themes far better than I can, and I highly recommend in particular Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography by . My friend is also hosting a webinar on similar themes in a few weeks—do register!

I anticipate writing more about Tolkien here in the future as his books are a family favorite. (Our 8- and 6-year-old have heard the whole Lord of the Rings read aloud and memorized selections). But for today I want to explore just one aspect of Tolkien’s storytelling: his art.

The Hobbit cover, illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien.

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Tolkien the artist

Did you know Tolkien was an artist as well as an author?

I hadn’t realized that Tolkien illustrated his own books until several years ago, when Tolkien’s art came on tour to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. We didn’t have kids yet, and I worked around the corner at a higher education reform organization, the National Association of Scholars. The Morgan Library (once J.P. Morgan’s house) waived admission fees on Friday nights, so my husband and I had made a habit of visiting the Morgan every few months. We’d take in the art, admire the books (three Gutenberg Bibles!), and enjoy the live string quartet.

Of course we wanted to see Tolkien’s art. But we put it off to the last weekend, and apparently so did everyone else. The line stretched for blocks. When we made it into the building, all the slots for the Tolkien exhibit were taken. We bought a book of Tolkien art prints at the gift shop and holed up in a corner to view it, dismal at the thought that we were only a wall’s breadth away from the real thing.

Tolkien painted with his words more so than with his brush, and it is his language more than his art that is so beloved. But perhaps his literary fame has overshadowed his art, which is meritorious in its own right. He is so well-known for his words that many—like me, until a few years ago—had no idea that he illustrated his own books, and illustrated them well.

So, although I’m sure you already own a copy or two of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, consider a copy with Tolkien’s work.

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“Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves,” by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The best editions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction

Welcome to our first Editions Guide. For some classics, there are too many versions out there. Which ones are best?

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The Hobbit

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” wrote Tolkien on a blank exam paper, and so began the adventures of Bilbo Baggins. Tolkien wrote the story for his children, who helped him pick the characters’ names. The Hobbit is a staple in every child’s read-aloud lineup, and—like a truly great children’s book—in any adult’s library as well.

Overall pick: 75^th anniversary edition of The Hobbit with Tolkien’s original art

Tolkien produced different versions of his illustrations that changed over several editions, beginning with mostly black-and-white for the first edition and later turning to full-color. This 75^th anniversary edition reproduces his full-color art on both the cover and inside.

Beware! Several other editions look very similar to this one, having Tolkien’s artwork on the cover but including none of his interior art.

For the artist: The Hobbit with all of Tolkien’s art

This exhaustive edition includes not only Tolkien’s art published in early editions of The Hobbit, but also drafts and sketches that offer a glimpse at his creative process. If you want the full picture of Tolkien as not just an author but as an artist, this is the edition for you.

For the scholar: Facsimile of the First Edition

Tolkien made some substantial changes to The Hobbit after it came out in 1937, such that the editions we mostly read now (though still written by Tolkien) are quite different from what he originally wrote.

Not until years later, as he was preparing to write The Lord of the Rings trilogy, did Tolkien decide that the ring Bilbo acquired from Gollum was in fact the One Ring. The chapter “Riddles in the Dark” therefore needed to be rewritten. And in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien worked in an acknowledgement of these revisions. In The Fellowship of the Ring, he has Bilbo say that he wrote a book about his adventures but that he originally didn’t tell the whole tale.

Actual first edition copies of The Hobbit are, of course, very expensive. But in 2018 HarperCollins re-released the first edition text with Tolkien’s original black-and-white illustrations. It’s still pricy, but far more affordable than a real first edition, and it comes with a CD of Tolkien reading some excerpts.

I recently bought a copy of this edition. It’s been pretty exciting to read through the first edition text.

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“The Forest of Lothlorien in Spring,” by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings

Strictly speaking, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is not a series of children’s books.

But they are suitable, and I would argue important, for children old enough to bear grief and hope at the same time. In my house, we hold Tolkien Recitation Nights (three times so far), at which friends join us to recite Tolkien’s poetry and prose, and often dress in costume. The kids are, if possible, even more enthusiastic than my husband and I.

To be honest, I like Tolkien’s art for The Hobbit more than I do for The Lord of the Rings, and I’ll list another illustrator as well who does justice to Tolkien’s worldbuilding. But please don’t buy an edition that features still-shots from the movies. Peter Jackson’s film adaptations are admirable, but they’re not Tolkien. Any readers who haven’t seen the films—which likely includes your kids—deserve the chance to form their own impressions from Tolkien himself. Let them imagine what they read and piece the descriptions together in their own mind.

The Lord of the Rings hardcover with Tolkien’s art

All three books in one volume – massive, but the only one I know of in print with all of Tolkien’s art.

This hardcover edition features Tolkien’s cover art as well as his maps and other drawings. The paperback option available at the same link does not, however, so be sure to get the hardcover if you want Tolkien’s art.

The Lord of the Rings Illustrated by Alan Lee

Alan Lee’s illustrations are intricate and beautiful as well. Lee’s art inspired much of the imagery of the movie adaptations but predates the films. This is a boxed set with The Hobbit as well as The Lord of the Rings.

Collections of Tolkien’s art

Tolkien produced much more art beyond that which is included in the more well-known legendarium. Here are some options for where to obtain the rest.

Tolkien: Treasures, by Catherine McIlwaine

Published by the Bodleian Library, this is the edition I own, purchased in our depressing moment at The Morgan Library when we realized we weren’t going to see Tolkien’s art.

This book features high resolution color prints of Tolkien’s art as well as a bit of commentary.

Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien

This collection, with notes by Christopher Tolkien, brings together the highlights of J.R.R. Tolkien’s art. This is a beautiful supplement to non-illustrated editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Other Illustrated Children’s Books by Tolkien

Letters from Father Christmas

Every Christmas, the Tolkien children sent letters to Father Christmas (Santa Claus) and received lavishly illustrated missives in reply.

Of course, the responses were written and illustrated by Tolkien, who wove together tales of Father Christmas and the North Polar Bear warding off the high dangers of goblins as well as more banal domestic troubles. He couldn’t keep the legendarium out of the Christmas stories, so keep an eye out for Gollum!

While not originally intended for publication, these letters were later collected and released, and we’re so glad they were! Even in our household—where no one has ever believed Santa was real—we love the Father Christmas letters.

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I’ll close with my favorite piece of art by Tolkien, currently hanging on my living room wall, and an accompanying observation from The Hobbit.

Rivendell, as painted by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I can only aspire for my house to be as welcoming, beautiful, strong, and mystical as Rivendell was. But my days do share one key feature with Rivendell, as described here:

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to, while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a good deal of telling anyway. They stayed long in that good house….Yet there is little to tell about their stay.”

May our days be full with much good, so much that there is little to tell.

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Therefore, you may be as excited as I am at finding a good book that celebrates good books—which is what our list today focuses on.

Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash.

Last week my husband read aloud at the dinner table part of an article I was writing on the decline of reading and some model legislation aimed at getting whole books back in schools. My kids thought surely he was joking. There are people who don’t read books? Really?

They were stunned because in our house, books are everywhere and we read them constantly. Probably your house is the same.

But one of the things I appreciate about the books on today’s list is that they remind us how miraculous books are. We take them for granted, but really, it’s amazing that we have books. It’s amazing that someone had the time (made the time) to think and to write, and perhaps an illustrator added pictures, and someone printed the book, and a bookstore made it available, and all of this is now done inexpensively enough that we have thousands of books and a perpetual problem of not enough bookshelves.

Today’s list features five picture books that love books (plus one bonus chapter book). We explore how they’re made, why they’re made, how to read them, why they’re a delight. I’m also on the hunt for a couple more specific books in this vein. Read to the end for my request, and please let me know if you have some to recommend.

Books that love books

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The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco

Young Mary Ellen doesn’t want to read a book. Too much work. “Just the right time to find a bee tree!” exclaims Grampa. (Yes, his name is spelled this way.)

The two chase after bees, and on each page colorful, interesting neighbors join the pursuit. The whole countryside, it seems, turns out for a party to celebrate the newfound honey, but Grampa pulls Mary Ellen aside to spoon some honey on to a book. “Taste. It’s sweet.” That’s what reading brings you – sweet rewards, but you have to chase them through the pages of a book.

Several other books by Polacco, especially Thank You, Mr. Falker, tell of Polacco’s dyslexia and the resulting bullying she faced. Her life is changed by one good teacher who sees potential, works persistently with her after school, and eventually enables her to open up the gift of reading. Polacco knows well the hard work of chasing the honey.

Across a Dark and Wild Sea, by Don Brown

Stark and rugged, this one reminds anew of how incredible it is to own a book. In the 500s, books are rare and expensive. Columcille’s intense desire for his own hand-copied book ends up sparking—get this—a war. He wins the battle, but guilt drives him across the sea to start monasteries and scriptoriums. This true story gives a glimpse of life in the Dark Ages and a sense of awe at the grandeur of books.

The Man Who Loved Books, by Jean Fritz, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

Another retelling of the story of Columcille (this time rendering his name “Columba”). I know, two books on the same story, but they’re both so good. This one is just a little longer. It’s out of print but inexpensive used.

Jean Fritz is, in my view, far and away the best author of biographies for children, though her reputation is sullied by a few that are deeply pessimistic about the Christian faith. (Watch in future months for an author profile on her.) This book by her is excellent, though, and beautifully set off by Trina Schart Hyman’s illuminations.

Marguerite Makes a Book, by Bruce Robertson, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt

Another tribute to books, Marguerite Makes a Book follows a young girl who literally makes a book—the only way to get one until Johann Gutenberg’s printing press. (A companion book, Thérèse Makes a Tapestry, takes us on a similar journey through the process of weaving.)

The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane, by C.M. Millen, illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski

This fictional tale imagines the first monk who came up with the idea of colorful illuminations. Theophane concocts a variety of inks that enable the vivid, arresting art of medieval books.

After reading this book, my kids attempted to make ink out of all the backyard plants.

Bonus: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham

Jean Lee Latham won the 1956 Newbery Medal for this chapter book telling the true story of early American mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch. A man bereft of opportunity, Bowditch nonetheless manages to “sail by ash breeze”—that is, to row his own boat by hard work when no external wind fills his sails.

Though he lacks the chance to attend school, Bowditch fills every spare moment with a book, teaching himself not only mathematics but also numerous languages. (These he learns by means of just a bilingual dictionary and a copy of the Bible in the desired language.)

Bowditch becomes an honored American hero and the author of the so-called “Sailor’s Bible,” The New American Practical Navigator, which to this day is carried aboard every commissioned U.S. Naval vessel.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is my all-time favorite children’s book. I won’t claim that it’s the best children’s book ever written or the single most deserving read. But it’s the one I love most deeply and gravitate toward over and over.

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Can you help?

And now, a request. I am looking for good children’s books about Johann Gutenberg and the printing press, about the process of writing a book, and about the translation of the Bible. So far what I’ve found are decent, check-the-box types of books but nothing that is truly a living book.

There must be something great out there. If you have a recommendation, will you please share in the comments below?

Edit June 2026: suggested Ink on His Fingers for a book on Gutenberg. I’ve now read it with my children, and I second Melisa’s recommendation! It’s the best chapter book I’ve seen on Gutenberg.

I do think Ink on His Fingers was meant to be read independently, not read aloud, as it includes a lot of dialogue set off merely by punctuation and spacing visible to the eye but harder to hear. That said, I did read the book aloud to my children, and they both loved it and kept asking for one more chapter. Thank you, Melisa, for this recommendation!