Joann Luke

Robert Lawson, author and illustrator of Rabbit Hill and its sequel The Tough Winter knew something about gardens and the community they attract, that is, the animal community they attract. After all, doesn’t Rabbit Hill open with scenes of excited animals spreading the news that new folks had arrived, folks who like to garden? Robert Lawson [...]

I hold in my hands Autumn Serried Woods, a collection of poems by Kai Mills. The poems are in both Chinese and English. I can’t read Chinese, so thank goodness for the English. Yet, as I open the book, I find my eyes are not drawn to the English I know, but to the Chinese I [...]

If you are not a bird watcher, your first bird hike can be excruciating. In 45 minutes you can cover 500 yards in the assorted company of people who stand, stare and occasionally mumble odd phrases like “wing-bar,” “downy,” and “drink-your-tea.” The experience can be a little surreal until you also enter into that surreal world, [...]

When you do not wonder, no one is important except yourself. But when you do wonder, the whole universe is important. You begin to notice everyone and everything, and you discover both the connections and the gaps between everyone and everything. When your wonder moves like a threaded needle through the fabric of the world, you [...]

Literature is read and loved because it has that beautiful way of shining light on the mysterious ways of our being. It helps us to become reflective and thoughtful people as we glimpse the varied trials of humanity. These trials elicit from us compassion, sorrow, gratitude, admiration, and perhaps most importantly a sense of kinship. I [...]

If I want to become childlike this Advent, I think there is no better way than to spend time with someone who is already childlike. There are few characters in Ageless Children’s Literature who are more so than Winnie-the-Pooh. This bear of little brain is just the guide I want as I settle into an armchair [...]

We who read Ageless Children’s Literature seldom see a spider without thinking of the dark gang of arachnids from Mirkwood or the gentle, gray Charlotte. We look on the spider and think, friend or foe? We wrestle with whether we love, hate, or simply fear the creature, and perhaps, (because we are very well read), we [...]

I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times; Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men.   Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways. Proverbs 8:30-32 All the world is my palette; all [...]

No doubt, those of us addicted to film versions of Pride and Prejudice remember the scene in one or another of the productions where Mr. Bennett, in the aftermath of dealing with all of his daughters wayward and otherwise, is sitting in his study enjoying a glass of sherry and chuckling over the humor rising off [...]

Joan Windham’s Six O’Clock Saints series is witty, pithy and droll. In three volumes she lightly recounts the lives of several saints in a style reminiscent of Kipling’s Just So Stories. The tales have a homey, conversational tone, are filled with humorous anachronisms, and abound with common sense. Indeed, one has the impression that while Joan [...]