Kids Books – Page 4 – Kristin Houlihan, Writer

Why “The Hobbit” is not just for kids – Reblog from Aleteia.org

I came across this commentary this morning and I think it’s just wonderful. While I haven’t read The Hobbit since high school, it is one of the books (along with Lord of the Rings) that I hope to introduce to my kids when they’re old enough. The author of this commentary, Tod Worner, captures, I think, the essence of why I read and what I hope my children gain from reading. I particularly love the GK Chesterton quote he includes! Please find the original piece here.

Why ‘The Hobbit’ is not just for kids

Tod Worner | Jul 03, 2018

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How reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s story to his 10-year-old daughter unexpectedly stirred this father’s soul.

I have a confession to make.

I am just finishing The Hobbit for the first time. And I am almost 45.

Okay, okay. So it’s not scandalous. But to those who consider themselves well-read Catholics, not having read The Hobbit and its three-volume sequel, The Lord of the Rings, is considered perplexing if not irresponsible. After all, they are essential works of the moral imagination.

For years, I have been told how good these books are. In them, tales unfold of an extraordinary quest of unlikely heroes, unimaginable creatures and unexpected twists. Ice-capped mountains and lush valleys, barren hillsides and forbidding forests serve as terrain for a motley crew of unlikely allies who strive and suffer together towards an end much larger than themselves.

And so, earlier this year, my 10-year-old daughter and I decided to embark on reading The Hobbit together nightly as she went to bed.

And it has been extraordinary.

As we walked each night with the diminutive Bilbo Baggins from his cozy home in the Shire to the perilous wide world of Middle Earth, we encountered elves and wizards, trolls and goblins, spiders and orcs. We sensed the constant thrill of the adventure ahead mixed (paradoxically) with the forlorn homesickness for what was left behind. Again and again, we agreed with Bilbo’s skepticism about himself. He is a nimble thief? He is an indispensable member of group of dwarves trekking to reclaim a mountain and its treasure from a hell-spewing dragon? He is a hero? Right. But then, time and again, Bilbo proved he was just a little bit smarter, just a touch braver, just a smidge better than either my daughter or I expected. The little hobbit was growing. And we were growing with him.

But there were no small number of times that I wondered what the devil this hobbit thought he was doing. He had a comfortable home and an easy-going life. His books were well-ordered and his larder was full. His fire was toasty and his room warmly-lit. Why leave it all? Why walk away from the known and predictable for the wild and uncertain? Night after night, just walking with Bilbo into the greater unknown made me pull the comforter a bit tighter and snuggle a bit closer to my daughter.

But, after all, that is what these tales are all about. They remind us of our smallness, but our potential for greatness. They illustrate the peril of living dangerously, but also the risk of not living at all. They re-acquaint us with eternal verities (often considered outmoded) such as duty, loyalty and honor as well as the bright line (forever at risk of being blurred) separating right from wrong and good from evil. They instill in us a devotion to each other and a greater reason for being beyond our own selfish appetites. And they do this all in the form of a parable.

The great southern Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor once observed,

“I tell a story because a statement would be in adequate.”

Quite right. In a world deaf to platitudes, J.R.R. Tolkien decided to shout with hideous orcs, an incinerating dragon and an intoxicating ring. But the tale isn’t a tale for the sake of telling a tale. Allegories are allegories for a reason. They speak to sins and virtues, temptations succumbed to and temptations resisted, damnation averted and grace received. As G.K. Chesterton once noted,

Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Indeed.

We must remember: The dragon can be killed. The ring can be destroyed. You can endure suffering. You can return home.

Chesterton reminds us,

At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence … The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise or wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy.

As I was lying there reading The Hobbit to my 10-year-old daughter, I smiled and once again understood.

I am alive.

And I am happy.

Thank you, Todd and Aleteia!

A Rock Can Be… – Picture Book review!

We recently checked this book out from the library – I’m not sure who picked it out, because when it comes to my 4-year-old, it’s a big hodge-podge of stuff she likes the covers of and things my husband or I intentionally seek out for her. However we got our hands on it, I’m glad we did!

To be honest, I’m not sure if my kids are nearly as taken with the book as I am, but I have really enjoyed reading it to them a handful of times over the past two weeks. Essentially, the author takes a simple object — a rock — and shows how many diverse ways we see it around us, from the natural (lava!) to the man-made (stepping stones, stone fences for pastures). I might argue she left out “playground” with a picture of a rock climber, but I can let that one go 🙂

The artwork throughout is beautiful and eye-catching, and the text is beautifully simple; it’s easy enough to read to my toddler. At the end of the narrative, there are several pages over which the author explains each iteration of the rock throughout the book, which was wonderful to read/talk about with my 4-year-old. There’s also a glossary of terms at the very end, and I’m working on convincing my almost-7-year-old that she would actually find the book interesting (she’s skeptical of most anything she doesn’t pick out herself).

Also, I just discovered that this is part of a series! So now I’m excited to take a look at the author’s other books, too 🙂

5-stars, highly recommended!

Book Review: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy

I had such high hopes for this book, but unfortunately was ultimately disappointed. My husband picked it up for me at the library, thinking I might find it interesting — and I did! But I also found it a rather slow read that was definitely inappropriately titled. Rather than, “Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult,” a more accurate title would’ve been something like, “One man’s random musings on kids’ books,” because that’s sort of what it felt like to me. Some of those musings were interesting and insightful, and some were just…not. While this seems fairly critical thus far, I do want to highlight a few positives from the book that stood out to me as I read and motivated me to keep reading whenever I felt compelled to give up on the book.

First, the last thing you read in the book is, as is often the case, the author’s acknowledgements. It is clear from this writing that this was a labor of love for the author, and he put an incredible amount of work and effort into it. It took him six years to write the book, and after having read the whole thing, that doesn’t surprise me: it is meticulously researched.

Handy does a a great job distilling the biographies of many famous children’s authors. I was intrigued by the personal stories of authors such as Margaret Wise Brown, Dr. Seuss, Beverly Cleary, and Louisa May Alcott, among others. I learned a lot about their lives, their motivations for writing, and their struggles/triumphs of publishing. It was interesting as an editor of indie books to read about the dynamics between some of these authors and their editors and publishers. The information also lends context to some of the books; in some cases this is very interesting (as in The Cat in the Hat), and in others it is disappointing (as in Little Women).

Early on in the book Handy says, “…what we need from stories changes as we age. When we are very young, what we need are our parents. When we are older…we need…to pull away from their gravitational field….” Unfortunately, I can’t figure out at the moment where that quote is in the book (oops), but I remember it was in one of the first two chapters. He offered it as a way of explaining the differences in picture books for the youngest children and those geared toward slightly older children, but I think it holds a lot of truth – “what we need from stories changes as we age.” I would argue it’s not just as we age, but just as we travel through different phases of life (which may or may not be due to age) and it’s why I have trouble ever answering questions about my favorite books or favorite genres. I’m drawn to different books at different times, based on what I need from stories at that particular moment in my life.

On a simpler level, Handy’s writings on Beverly Cleary and her Henry Huggins/Ramona books inspired me to pick some of them up for my daughter to read. After looking through Ramona the Pest, I decided the books are good reading for her at this age and checked out a few from the library; just today I placed holds on a few more because she’s really been enjoying them. I never read them myself as a kid, and I’m always grateful for good book recommendations for my little bookworm!

Finally, I am awed by Handy’s opinion of C.S. Lewis. It’s rare to find an atheist who so highly praises a Christian writer. To me, the praise Handy gives Lewis is some of the highest:

I’m no expert, but Lewis’s ostensible fantasy strikes me as an unusually sophisticated, not to mention graceful and humane, portrayal of belief, no matter the age of the intended audience. Or perhaps I should just say that the Narnia books allow me to “get it” in a way that most religious expression, whether art or testament, does not (176).

I find that last sentence to be so beautiful, and to encapsulate the very purpose (as I see it) of the Narnia books — for people to “get it.” It speaks to Lewis’s great talent and, I would argue, some intervention of the Holy Spirit, that he can write such enjoyable books in such a way that even those who do not believe God exists can start to understand belief.

So, for lack of a more eloquent way to wrap this up, I’ll leave it there. Overall, I give the book probably a 2.5 (somewhere between “eh” and “it was ok”), but as you can see I gained quite a bit from it so it was worth persevering.