Episode 12: What A Family Can Do

Charity and her 11th grade students read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl along with Robert Spaemann's address "Education as an Introduction to Reality" as part of Texas Holocaust remembrance week. Charity shares a speech she gave to the high school, generated from reading these texts together.

Read Robert Spaemann's article "Education as an Introduction to Reality" You can print it as a pdf if you like. Underline and annotate it. ;)

Purchase a copy of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

We love the words truth, goodness, and beauty...but if someone asked us to explain what these are, maybe we'd be flummoxed? In this episode, Charity puts flesh into these concepts: Charity helps us see truth, identify beauty, and recognize goodness in children's books and gives us concrete examples of these concepts from books we know. After she walks us through her own book discernment process, Charity dispels two common myths that prevent us from being responsible literary guardians.

You can print this amazing LITERATURE DISCERNMENT WORKSHEET

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Why do we read? Two views predominate! Some want children to read (classic works of) fiction because fiction is a useful tool. Fiction illustrates or instructs  children in the moral life. Others want children to read because reading is pleasurable--and they resist any attempts to make fiction serve a purpose because reading fiction is not about utility. Yet, there is a third way! Charity leads us to Aristotle, Jesus, and Aquinas, to understand what integrated virtue is. We'll see HOW fiction works in the life of Ignatius of Loyola. And we'll dive into some aesthetics with Charity as she shows us how Beauty in fiction impacts desire and action. Charity shows us how Beauty is the cause of the greatest conversions--from the inside out.

This podcast is based on a breakout session Charity gave at ICLE's National Conference in July 2023.

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Charity updates us on how she spent her summer: Where she traveled with her family,  what work she's done for Well-Read Mom, and the two talks Charity presented at the national conference for the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education. Then, Charity shares some Big News that may impact Bright Wings: Children's Books.

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

What do you do when your life comes crashing down around you? Join Charity and author Katherin Nolte, author of Back to Bright Before, as they dig into this and other  beautiful questions posed by Katherin's first novel. In this chiaroscuro book, sweetness and tradgedy contend in the life of one young family. Katherin also shares about how to write a book as a homeschooling mother. What is it like to craft a realistic-mystical story that shows that hope is stronger than despair? Discover a new favorite book for your 8-12 year old in Back to the Bright Before! Happy summer reading!

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, has sold more than 2.5 million copies. What's not to love in this landmark survival story? Charity shares our pleasure for all the good parts of Hatchet and asks us to take a closer look at some of the larger claims the book makes--especially to our boys--about identity, competency, hope, and survival.

Check out:
The Young Man and the Sea by Rodman Philbrick

For Further Reading:
Torn Asunder: Children, the Myth of the Good Divorce, and the Recovery of Origins  edited by Margaret Harper McCarthy

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Everyone is happy to promote "girl power," and we did our own version of that theme in Episode 18: Stories for Strong Girls. But what about our boys? Is there something distinctive about being a boy? What is good about being a boy? Dr. William Hamant joins Charity to discuss what is positive and distinctive about masculinity.  He reflects upon what masculinity reveals about what it means to be human. Dr. Hamant supports his insights with literature and poetry and wise experience.

PRINTABLE LIST of Best Books for Boys

Poetry quoted by Dr. William Hamant:
"When Nature Wants a Man" by Angela Morgan
"Man in the Arena" by Theodore Roosevelt OR a print-and-frame version!
"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

To learn more about what is happening to boys and men:

• Honestly podcast, "Why We Must Save Our Boys"
•  Youtube video, "Avoiding School Shootings and The Boy Crisis"
• Honestly podcast, "Why Men Seek Danger"

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Wildwood, the first in a trilogy by Colin Meloy, is praised by Trenton Lee Stewart. It is also 541 pages! Could this book be the start of the next greatest series for your child?! It is long and has sequels...could this be just the thing for my voracious readers? Listen and discover along with Charity what this book is like--do it's characters have any character? Do they discover where they're from? Where they are going? 

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

 Can an author as prolific as Gordon Korman really generate books of value? After reading a dozen Gordon Korman books (sample size is 10% ladies and gentleman!) Charity delivers the answers and makes her recommendations.

Check out the recommended book list!

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!

Have you ever returned to a beloved children' book as an adult and found the content unnerving? Charity introduces the topic of cynicism as a perspective that shapes what we are able to see, a stance that conditions our vision, a judgement that conditions our choices. Charity introduces an excellent essay by Anna Kaladish Reynolds regarding cynicism, a critical reading of Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully. Reynold's essay proposes that the innocence available in picture books like Mirette On the High Wire may help us to learn a wisdom that is greater than any that cynicism can offer to us.

Read Innocence: A Perspective of Intelligent Reading on the Bright Wings' blog.

Follow Bright Wings: Children's Books on Instagram :)

Find quick book recommendations by following Charity on Instagram.

Enjoy essays on the Bright Wings' blog OR find great book lists personally crafted with you in mind!