The Hovel

close-up of kangaroo face

Fair Trials and Kangaroo Courts: An Interpretive Philosophy

I spent March on the road traveling to homeschool conventions. These are interesting events: educators, professionals, and entrepreneurs of every stripe fill exhibit halls with their wares and spend literal hours on concrete floors explaining their materials. Wide-eyed parents are just trying to figure it all out so that their precious charges can get what they need to survive in the world. Of course, “need” is a broad term…

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stack of colorful picture books

Picture Books…for High Schoolers?

If you are already thinking about the reading list you will assign to your students next fall, congratulations – you are way ahead of Missy and me! But let me offer one piece of advice as you assemble your curriculum: Assign children’s picture storybooks to all of your students in the first few weeks of the school year…

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moody Scottish cliff's edge

“Another Golgotha”

Holding my breath, suffocated by the burning odor of bleach, I took up my sponge against the scarred and yellow linoleum of my first apartment’s kitchen floor. The war raged long. Arms weary, knees bruised, I scrubbed like my life depended on it. And when I rinsed the host of suds at the end of a long afternoon…the floor did not look any cleaner. I obsessed over that kitchen floor for the whole first year of my marriage. I took it as a black mark against my identity as a homemaker…

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close up of boxers with red boxing gloves

Conflict–The Heart of Every Story

“Write me a story,” I said to the girls in my junior high composition class. “It is due next Wednesday.” That was the extent of the assignment I gave them. No limits, no rules, no guidance – nothing. Admittedly, I was new. As a first year teacher, I had no way of knowing what I was in for, or how grave an error I had just made. If I had been more experienced, I would have been alarmed by the eager light coming on in the students’ eyes. These were aspiring writers, after all. They had always wanted to change the world with the great American novel, and I had just promised to edit it for them…

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child throwing leaves

“Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild!” – Grace for the Dog Days of Winter

February’s doldrums are upon us. The festive season is long gone, and summer break is far beyond our reach. As an antidote, I would like to recommend Mem Fox’s classic picture book, Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild!  (Harcourt, 2000). If you are anything like me, you will relate to the protagonist in this story immediately – and her experience might help you redeem the Dog Days of winter…

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tropical island

A World Without Books and Other Catastrophes, or Why I Hate the Desert Island Game

On our first BiblioFiles podcast episode, Ian posed the Desert Island Question: If you were confined to a desert island with only three books, which would you choose? He and the rest of the CenterForLit staff laughed when I struggled to name three. I couldn’t decide. I was paralyzed. How could I possibly narrow it down to a mere three titles?… 

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man holds Bible in front of his face

Christian Books and Christian Reading: Part Two

Ernest Hemingway’s prize winning 1953 novella The Old Man and the Sea opens on Santiago, an ancient fisherman, who is mired in an epic streak of bad luck. He has not caught a fish in many days – so many, in fact, that he is near starvation and has been shunned as cursed by the other fisherman in the small village where he lives and works. The novel tells the story of his last voyage, in which he travels farther out into the Sea than anyone has ever dared, and catches the greatest fish in history. As a master fisherman, Santiago draws on his expert knowledge and long experience to hook the giant fish, who then drags the tiny boat out into the heart of the Sea…

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look up through trees

Joy and Death in Tolkien

It’s tempting to think that reading fantasy is about escaping from one’s own world. I’d bet that everyone has wished at least once that they could join their favorite characters in their world—things always turn out better, or at least they seem far more exciting through the eyes of our favorite authors. But I think to dismiss fantasy literature as escapism is to ignore the central attraction of a good fantasy novel: its capacity to recast universal truths in winning ways…

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wooden shack by a lake on a cloudy day

An Apology for “The Hovel”

I think my husband is tired of letting me name things. Our life is becoming a living encyclopedia for the work of William Shakespeare. We have a car named “Hal,” a plant named “Brutus,” and I’m trying to figure out how to convince Ian to let me use “Miranda” as the middle name of a future daughter. (I have a particularly soft spot in my heart for The Tempest.) Needless to say, when it was time to dream up titles for all of our new endeavors at CenterForLit, nothing was safe. I suggested an alternative Shakespearean title for every new product we’re releasing. Most of them got shot down, but as a consolation prize everyone was kind enough to let me name the blog…

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