62 episodes
Bright Wings: Children’s Books to Make the Heart Soar Charity Hill
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- Kids & Family
How do you know a good book when you see it? What books are really worth reading? The purpose of this conversation is to help mothers and fathers identify books that will liberate their children to embrace truth, goodness, and beauty. We’ll be pondering questions of life and lifestyle as we seek to become people who live deeply and read deeply, drawing our children into the adventure of reading and living.
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Read Fantasy?
Do your kids read fantasy? What do you think of magic? Is magic good? Bad? Join Charity as she considers why fantasy is such an important category of fiction to read! Perhaps, like Aslan, fantasy is "not safe, but good."
Discover great fantasy books for your child: The Great Fantasy Book List (pdf)
Purchase The Great Fantasy Book List through Bright Wings' Bookshop
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! -
Reading Man's Search for Meaning
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! -
What ARE Truth, Beauty, and Goodness...and How Do I Find Them In Books?!
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! -
HOW Fiction Educates for a Life of Virtue
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! -
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
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! -
Back to the Bright Before, Interview with Author Katherin Nolte
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!