Beginning With The End

In my beginning is my end.

T.S. Eliot

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If you've found this website, you've likely listened to our podcast. Like so many of us, you probably wonder "What kind of book does my child need right now?" Or maybe, more simply, "Where can I find the good books?"

Here at Bright Wings: Children's Books to Make the Heart Soar we're thinking about this all the time. We want to enter into a conversation together that makes life richer, that makes mothering and fathering more thoughtful, and reading together a joy. Booklists are such a helpful source to get you started on what literature to "feed" your child... But what if you want to learn to think and choose for yourself? Do you love to think about and talk about books? Bright Wings: Children's Books can't wait to engage with you, because conversation helps us both grow.

What if this isn't you? What if you're so busy "putting out the fires" and surviving you can't remember what the mission of parenting is? Is it keep my kids alive, fed, and not-living-in-squalor until tomorrow?! Not only have we been there--often enough, we're still there! Together, let us raise our eyes and mind from the tasks at hand with a conversation that allows us to ponder more than the grocery list or laundry pit or the latest squabble. Let us enter into a new thoughtfulness together. I need to do this podcasting as much as I hope you need to hear it. Together, we’ll give old ideas a second thought as we fold laundry or run to school pick up.

If you haven't listened to our first podcast yet, give it a go, because it will help you understand the framework of the conversation we're building. The podcasts that follow after the first podcast deliberately build from its themes. In the first podcast, I propose that the ultimate goal of parenting, of my mothering, is that my child grow into a man or woman capable of freely and definitively donating themselves to the relationships that define them: relations with parents, family, earth, community, and God. The best books will share in my mission to mother my children “right now” toward this deeply-engaged destiny. These books ask and answer the great questions of human existence: "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? What good must I do?"

These are dramatic questions, which we answer with our lives. Let’s begin!