Category: Books

  • We adored reading Charlotte’s Web to our four year old

    We adored reading Charlotte's Web to our four year old.  

    Charlotte's Web

    E. B. White, Garth…

    Best Price $0.01 
    or Buy New $11.55

    The cartoon DVD from 1973 is also mild and innocent and so therefore good.  

    Charlotte's Web

    Debbie Reynolds, H…

    Best Price $2.75 
    or Buy New $10.49

    We have not seen the 2006 version.   

    Charlotte's Web

    Dakota Fanning, Ju…

    Best Price $1.90 
    or Buy New

    Buy from Amazon.com

  • My Favorite Bibles for Kids ages 2-5

    For children ages 2 and 3, I would recommend the Read Aloud Bible Stories (volumes 1-4): 

    For children 3-5, I would recommend The Beginner’s Bible

    and the Read with Me Bible

    and The Big Picture Story Bible.  It comes with CDs with page signals.  It does not give many of the basic Bible stories but rather tries to give kids the overall story of the Bible. 

    Until Ryan turned five, the Jesus Storybook Bible was too abstract–in good reformed fashion showing how Jesus relates symbolically to every story.  But he loved it at age 5.  It is inspired by Tim Keller’s preaching.   

    And I would also recommend for children 2-5 Mary Manz Simon story books such as these two.  They give illustrations for every aspect of the story–thus cementing the story. 

     

    And this looks good for five year olds as well:

    You may be able to find these at your church library or public library but we have not been able to find them so Bibles are almost the only books we’ve bought. 

  • Books I’m Reading in March 2010

    BOOKS I'M READING (MARCH 2010)

    • William H. Willimon: Conversations with Barth on Preaching

      William H. Willimon: Conversations with Barth on Preaching
      This is the most academically rigorous of all Willimon's books and reflects deeply on what we should get from Barth and what we should press him about.

    • James William McClendon, Jr.: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: Ethics

      James William McClendon, Jr.: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: Ethics
      After Barth, Bonhoeffer, Yoder, MacIntyre, Newbigin, and Hauerwas and Volf, I am now enjoying working through the three volumes by baptist theologian McClendon (1924-2000). The Christian Century obituary includes these statements, A widely admired theologian with Southern Baptist roots, one who moved comfortably in ecumenical circles, had the pleasure of viewing a finished copy of the third and final volume of his life work, Systematic Theology, shortly before his death at age 76. James William McClendon Jr. died on October 30 at his home near Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he was distinguished scholar-in-residence for the past ten years. "He saw the book just before he lost consciousness," said wife Nancey Murphy, professor of theology at Fuller . . . Theologian Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School said McClendon's three volumes–titled Ethics, Doctrine and Witness, in that sequence–"will acquire increasing significance and regard" among theologians. "It's the first presentation of what a theology would look like that takes very seriously the work of [the late] John Howard Yoder," he said. See also the fascinating profile of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. by Michael L. Westmoreland-White.

    • George Eliot: Middlemarch

      George Eliot: Middlemarch
      Eugene Peterson has said about it, "The tangle of spiritual intimacy and vocational pride that is the worm in the apple of the Christian life is diagnostically narrated here in an unforgettable story." This week Alan Jacobs highlights Rebecca Mead's comment that "Sometimes I feel as if everything that is worth knowing about love and marriage (and maybe about everything else, too) can be learned from reading Middlemarch.”