Charlotte’s Blog
My Pal, Victor: A bilingual story with a disabled character
I thought that I would love Diane Gonzales Bertrand’s bilingual picture book, My Pal, Victor. Characters with disabilities are incredibly rare in picture books. A picture book that includes a child who has a disability and who is not white, is a rare and precious...
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How to make lime curd
I hope you'll forgive me for sharing a recipe that has eggs in it during the Apostles Fast. But two weeks ago, my “ugly fruit” box came with ten limes. I wasn't sure what to do with so many limes. So I decided to make lime curd. What’s an ugly fruit box you ask? It’s...
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Saint Francis and the Wolf: A new telling of an old story
Saint Francis and the Wolf is Jane Langton’s lovely retelling of a legend from the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Perhaps you know the story. The town of Gubbio, in Tuscany, was being terrorized by an enormous wolf. It prowled around Gubbio, “clawing at the gates by...
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Snook Alone: A story of a real dog and a cartoon monk
Snook Alone has a lot of words. Unusual words. Beautiful words. Evocative words. Words of longing. Words that sigh. Words that slip between prose and poetry and back again. Words as soft as prayer, as haunting as the sea. I adore the words. All the words. Because of...
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Saints for students with learning difficulties
Guest post by Agatha Rodi I am a teacher in Patras, Greece. I teach English and French, but I feel blessed because, for the last 6 years, I have had many students with dyslexia, autism, issues with working memory, short-term memory, stuttering, and ADHD. It's a real...
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Dad, Jackie, and Me: More than a baseball story
April 15, 1947. A boy in Brooklyn is glued to the radio. It is opening day of the baseball season. Jackie Robinson is about to play his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The boy dreams of going to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers play. And when his dad, who knows...
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Looking Out for Sarah: A day in the life of a guide dog
Looking Out for Sarah describes a day in the life of Perry, the guide dog for a blind woman named Sarah. And Looking Out for Sarah received the Schneider Family Book Award the first year the awards were given. You know, of course, about the Caldecott and Newbery...
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The Saint and the Circus: A story of drama on the high wire, with miracles
The Saint and the Circus is quirky and charming and utterly adorable. It was originally a chapter in an Italian children's book called Storie dell'orizzonte. This chapter, "Le grazie di san Tonio" is the story of Filofilo, “the daring acrobat for the Bumbellini...
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Faceblindness in the family
It was early November. We were in the car, talking about Halloween costumes. A teenager visiting our house had worn a costume that included contact lenses. One lens made his eye look red, and the other made his eye look black. “Mom,” asked my child, “do some people...
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Four Books with Autistic Main Characters
You may have noticed that I’m behind – way, way behind! – in book reviews. Because April is Austism Awareness Month, I had planned to review picture books with autistic characters during April. That didn’t happen. But I’m not the only person in the world who reviews...
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In This Family, We Don’t Judge
If you get my newsletter, you would have read a version of this post about a month ago. I've expanded it here, because the issue of judging others is so important to our salvation. The Uncondemning Monk During his life, the Uncondemning Monk was a terrible, horrible,...
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Dairy-free Paska Cheese
Paska cheese is a traditional Russian dessert that is made with lots of farmer's cheese, butter, and eggs. It's eaten with a sweet, rich bread that is (usually) called kulich. Kulich is sometimes called paska, and paska sometimes has other names, too. But whatever you...
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