A progressive Christian curriculum that links meaningful children's books with sacred and spiritual teachings
It may be Christmastime but on a small, forlorn farm the holiday season is best forgotten, along with painful memories of loved ones lost. Mother Nature has other plans, however, and a chance snowstorm brings together two unlikely hearts, one human and one beast, yet both yearning for comfort, companionship, and that most elusive gift of all, hope. Sleeping Bear Press (2004).
This is a moving story of the power of the simple gift of love, written by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth).
On Christmas Eve, a man recalls the holiday many years ago when he gave his father, a struggling farmer, a most-appreciated gift: the boy rose extra early to do his father’s biggest chore, the milking. Buehner’s inky, starlit winter skies and rustic barn revealed by lantern light transport readers to a hushed and humble setting, reminiscent of the manger. HarperCollins (2002).
It’s clear that the narrator holds a bitter grudge as s/he sends an enemy crude and discarded gifts over the course of the “twelve nights of Christmas.” What the narrator’s enemy decides to do with each of these gifts is nothing less than a Christmas miracle, touching on themes of forgiveness and redemption and the hope of a new beginning that the Christmas story promises. Shadow Mountain (2015).
