I have been reading The Sweet Taste of Providence for well over a year. Last winter it was beside my fireside chair. A few times a week I would pick it up, read a story, and then ponder it, knitting thoughtfully. During the busy gardening season it sat on my bookshelf, and recently I took […]
history
Review: Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes
For years Annie Bliss and her great uncle GrandBob had been sending each other messages via the boat section of the classifieds. But now something was wrong with GrandBob and Annie raced to Ansel-by-the-Sea. It had been twenty years since she spend that summer there, that hardest summer of her life, and GrandBob had taken […]
Review: A Little Book for New Historians by Robert Tracy McKenzie
Homeschoolers study history; it’s one of the things we do rather well. In fact, there are many homeschool programs that organize the year, or even the full 12 years, according to historical themes. Our family, too, has learned an enormous amount of history over the years and continues to do so. Yet I have always […]
Review: Between Two Shores by Jocelyn Green
When her Mohawk mother died, Catherine Stand Apart went to live with her French father Gabriel Duval near Montreal. Her sister Bright Star and their little brother Joseph stayed behind and, inevitably, part of Catherine’s heart did too. But she had made her choice; her father needed her. Now, in 1759 Catherine ran his trading […]
Review: The Invention of Clouds by Richard Hamblyn
Naming things is a powerful activity—it was man’s first task in Genesis—and this power is explored in Richard Hamblyn’s brilliant book The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies. I do not think I have ever read such a satisfying, lyrical, information-packed science history book before, although I have […]