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WRB—Children’s Literature Supplement, June 2025

WRB—Children’s Literature Supplement, June 2025

“‘zoo’ of roly-poly pill bugs”

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Sarah Colleen Schutte
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Grace Russo
Jun 23, 2025
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Washington Review of Books
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WRB—Children’s Literature Supplement, June 2025
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Once again, Sarah miscalculated and forgot to write the CLS on the correct date—thus why we’re publishing this a week later than usual. She hopes you’ll forgive her, but because she’s so date-challenged, she can’t promise the error won’t happen again. Anyway, since her excuses about being in Germany and at a wedding didn’t seem to move him, she’s trying to get back into Steve Larkin’s good graces and file this missive promptly. [All of our contributors are in my good graces. —Steve]

In today’s edition, in honor of the blistering heat wave sweeping the Midwest, we’ve got a list of classic summer titles, podcasts with handy summer reading hints, an author spotlight, and much more.

Summer suggestions

The Visitation Sessions podcast, hosted by Chris and Emily Chapman and Kate and Casey Stapleton is one of Sarah’s favorite shows. The hosts are fun, knowledgeable, and engaging, and Sarah appreciates the unique ways they approach each week’s topics. A few weeks ago, they did a show with

Haley Stewart
(the editor over at Word on Fire’s Votive children’s imprint) titled “Why Good Stories Matter,” and during the episode, they talked about great summer reads. Sarah couldn’t agree more with Kate’s opinion that books where characters are sitting by fireplaces should be read in colder months, and realized Emily was totally right about the Harry Potter series being a summer season read.

Also, over on the Hillsdale Podcast Network, the school’s K-12 Classical Education Podcast has quite a range of wonderful episodes. Sarah would like to recommend the episode with Sonja Bindus titled “Hallmarks of a Classical Summer,” which pairs nicely with both the Visitation Sessions themes and the following CLS summer reading suggestions.

Season’s readings

What’s almost as good as experiencing cloudless blue skies, running through sprinklers, and listening to summer insects? Reading about them. To that end, here, are some of Sarah’s suggestions:

Picture books

Chicken Sunday (1992) by Patricia Polacco

Summer Story (1980) by Jill Barklem

Time of Wonder (1957) by Robert McCloskey

Counting Our Way to Maine (1995) by Maggie Smith

Chapter books

Then There Were Five (1944) by Elizabeth Enright

Thimble Summer (1938) by Elizabeth Enright

Canadian Summer (1948) by Hilda Van Stockum

Strawberry Girl (1945) by Lois Lenski

The first Boxcar Children (1924) book by Gertrude Chandler Warner

In Grandma’s Attic (1974) by Arleta Richardson

Detectives in Togas (1953) by Henry Winterfeld

Mara, Daughter of the Nile (1953) by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Swallows and Amazons (1930) by Arthur Ransome

Minnesota calling

For her birthday, Sarah received a Maud Hart Lovelace collection from a friend. This author enchanted countless readers with her Betsy-Tacy tales, and Sarah’s new book was a pair of stories about side characters from the main books. Carney’s House Party (1949) and Winona’s Pony Cart (1976) are charming reads for old and new fans of Betsy and her home in Deep Valley.

Daring escapes

Sarah was inspired by Emily Malloy over at the Theology of Home Substack and picked up The Deliverance of Sister Cecilia (1954) from her local library. It was completely riveting, and Sarah recommends you treat it as Emily did and use it as a read-aloud for the whole family. Here’s a snippet of Sarah’s National Review piece on the subject:

Written as a first-person narrative, this true story was told by Sister Cecilia to journalist William Brinkley and published first in Life magazine in 1954. A fuller version of her account was then published as a book and even became the basis of a 1955 movie starring Claudette Colbert. From there, however, Sister’s thrilling life story seems to have fallen into obscurity. . . .

The book, which is broken into five parts, begins in medias res, with a scene where Sister, disguised in a blue polka dot dress, flees her convent, evading the Communists. From there, Sister takes readers back to her childhood, regaling us with hilarious stories of her life on a farm with loving parents and many siblings. She was always managing to get into some kind of trouble or cause a scene, and she continually pokes fun at herself and wonders how God ended up choosing her to become a nun.

This glimpse into both Sister’s early life and the workings of a rural Slovakian farm is beautiful and telling. It shows a strong, simple faith, a love of family, and a pride in one’s land. These realities and sentiments are all the more striking when juxtaposed with the Communist Party’s takeover later in the book, and show in a very small way some of what was lost.

What the kids are reading

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