Parents,
We are starting a new student book club on October 17. If you’re new and interested, please email info@fillthestage.com with your student’s name and grade.
We are alternating between two books. Here’s the book club page.
Regards,
Daniel
P.S. – This famous event recorded in Mark is one we will discuss.
I’m planning to read Abraham Lincoln’s speeches and a couple of Lincoln books by historian Allen C. Guelzo. To get started, I wanted a short, accessible overview of Lincoln’s life. So I searched online for the best Lincoln biography for high school students. Google search resulted in Award-winning Lincoln A Photobiography.
Winner of the 1988 Newberry Medal, the biography did not disappoint. It’s short, well-written, uses a large, pleasing font, and includes plenty of pithy quotes and pictures that help the reader get a sense of Lincoln’s life and times. It shows Lincoln’s boyhood home, backwoods family dynamic, education, personality, romance, rise, speeches, leadership, and struggles leading a nation through Emancipation and the Civil War.
If you want a book that helps young readers glimpse Lincoln’s greatness and grasp the historical context of his speeches (e.g., the Lincoln-Douglas Debates), I highly recommend it. Hardly less important, it was entertaining, I could barely put the book down.
The book concludes with a sample of Lincoln quotes, sites, and recommended biographies.
One of the greatest and most unforgettable stories, a young boy named Pip strives to rise and win the love of the cold-hearted, beautiful Estella. Victimized by the haunting Miss Havisham and lifted by a benefactor, Pip shuns those who love him most, but becomes heroic when all seems to crumble around him.
Charles Dickens masterfully describes the characters, Victorian society, family life, London, and the penal system. Memorable scenes include great humor and, at times, horror, as well as descriptions of Pip’s thoughts and moral change. Dickens combines horror, crime, detective, adventure, coming-of-age, and romance, shaping many plotlines toward a deeply meaningful end.
Readers are greatly entertained. The story’s twists and turns give insight into human nature. Lessons about character and human happiness require reflection, guidance, and more than one reading. The consequences of virtue and vice are portrayed in humorous and frightening ways. Dickens clearly values and elevates forgiveness, family, and work ethic.
The book nears 500 pages, but is much shorter than some of Dickens’ other novels. The long buildup is worthwhile for the novel’s reading experience, impact, and lessons. The moral world and punch lines are congruent with, and in some ways exclusively, Christian.
The Penguin Classics edition pictured above contains very helpful notes.
I recommend Leland Ryken’s short guide and commentary; it helped me understand the story and Dickens’ craft. You can read it alongside the book, though it contains a few spoilers.
Ryken highly recommends this edition’s introduction.
Tradeway’s five-day challenge is a great way to introduce high school students to investing and trading on the stock market. The course expands one’s vision of what’s possible.
For $97, students will learn the basics of trading, how to read charts, and profit from different markets. Most importantly, the course emphasizes the importance of putting one’s money to work and of investment as a biblical imperative for one’s family and the kingdom of God.
Lastly, Tradeway’s YouTube channel contains helpful trading videos for beginners.
Our choices reach beyond the present moment and seize more than just ourselves. Such is the significant lesson taught in the classic story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Shelley woos the reader’s attention and compellingly welcomes all into the world she creates through her vivid narrative, gripping plot, and memorable themes. The novel offers a powerful storyline that captures the dangers of obsession, unwillingness to act when evil first presents itself, the need for ethical input to direct the power of science, and the cost of losing the beauty of family and the enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures through a single act of self-centeredness.
My copy has a little more than 200 pages, which I completed in four hours, and every minute was well spent. I believe it will be the same for you.
After Moses led Israel out of Egypt, God made a covenant (serious agreement) with Israel. (The Old Testament books of Exodus and Deuteronomy document the deal.) If the Israelites loved God with everything they had and treated their neighbors justly, God would bless them and make them a light to the nations. If they broke the terms of the covenant and did not change their ways, they would be cursed. (See Deuteronomy 28.)
The Old Testament histories, including Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, detail the choices, actions, golden age (King David and King Solomon), successes, and, mostly, failures to keep the covenant, and the attendant consequences.
The prophets call Israel back to their covenant, indict them for their crimes, warn them of God’s judgment, plead with them to change their ways, and provide hope of God’s future mercy.
The prophetic books are divided into major and minor ones. Major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel are long works. The Twelve Minor Prophets (e.g., Jonah) are relatively short.
They reveal God’s sovereignty over the nations, His love for humanity and concern for justice, the horrors of idolatry, and God’s salvation plan through His Messiah and King, whom the New Testament identifies as Jesus of Nazareth.
Middle school or high school students who’ve read Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Samuel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah are well-positioned to enjoy and learn from the Minor Prophets. The message and literature move readers to consider what really matters.
For reading, I recommend the New Living Translation or the English Standard Version. For closer study, I recommend the New American Standard Bible (1995).
Have you ever wondered what classical Christian education is? This book is a very short primer for parents on the topic. The authors do a great job describing the basics of education and the importance of books, Latin, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
The main idea is that education requires parental effort and intentionality. Not only must parents encourage their children to read great books, but they must also read them diligently for growth and instruction.
Parental effort and intentionality extend to nurturing character, wonder, imagination, respect, language, knowledge, argumentation, and communication.
Moreover, parents must diligently learn and teach the Christian worldview and help their students love God with everything they have, including their minds. This requires recognizing that God is sovereign over all things.
Finally, the authors recommend books for parental and student education.
Over the weekend, I watched Young Washington in a local theater. I really enjoyed it. The movie largely followed the definitive biography by James Thomas Flexner on George Washington’s early years and exploits.
Recommend for high school students: young Washington’s quest for character, self-education, leadership roles, and courage under fire is compellingly displayed.
Young Washington had many exploits, including surveying dangerous wilderness, undertaking a long, treacherous diplomatic and spy mission for England’s King, and leading soldiers in war at Fort Necessity and during the French and Indian War, where he saved many lives during a defensive retreat. All by the age of 22.
Biographer James Thomas Flexner endeavored to set aside all presuppositions and contemporary views about Washington’s greatness and to let primary sources inform his writing, analysis, and conclusions.
Five books later — considered by one presidential biography reviewer to be the gold standard of presidential biographies — Flexner judged Washington to be truly great.
Washington’s countrymen, both common and elite, were in awe of his character and abilities. During America’s War for Independence, when told that Washington planned to return home and not seek political office, King George III said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
Using Flexner’s account, here’s the story of a 21-year-old Washington’s hazardous diplomatic mission through the Ohio River Valley. (Young Washington, the movie, shows Washington’s standoff with the French, but does not quite capture the difficulty of the journey there and back to Virginia; it also skips a near-fatal encounter with an Indian guide.)
Jeremiah, one of the Bible’s major prophetic works, foretold Jerusalem’s doom and destruction at the hands of Babylon, the superpower of the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Eventually, Babylon broke through Jerusalem’s walls, captured the king, and razed the city. At the end of the book, the unthinkable happens: Babylon, the golden empire, falls. Overthrown by an alliance of kings and nations led by Cyrus the Great of Persia.
Throughout the book, God, through the prophet Jeremiah, warns Judah and Jerusalem to forsake their rebellion and idolatry, but they refuse. Instead, they continue worshipping and offering sacrifices to idols and pagan gods. Even sacrificing their children, something God said never came to his mind.
The book’s scenes do not all unfold chronologically; instead, like a Christopher Nolan film, we are made to experience different aspects of the relentless drumbeat toward Jerusalem’s fall. Pressure builds as kings come and go; Jeremiah is targeted and imprisoned, left to die, and eventually rescued; Judah’s young king secretly seeks his counsel.
One thing is sure: the Babylonians are coming. And when they do, they eventually surround and besiege Jerusalem’s wall for two years. Famine, overconfidence, and terror fill their sad days. The great Nebuchadnezzar tightens his grip.
Judah’s national nightmare comes true, but it also intensifies. After Jerusalem is destroyed, those who remain are put under a Jewish governor named Gedaliah, only to be assassinated by a Jewish royal official. The people beg Jeremiah to ask God what they should do, promising to do as God commands. But when he tells them that they must not go to Egypt but remain in Judah, or they will suffer further destruction. They refuse to listen. While in Egypt, Jeremiah confronts the Judeans about their idol worship, but they brazenly declare, “We will not listen to your message from the LORD! We will do whatever we want…” (Jeremiah 44:15-16, New Living Translation).
The key to the book is the LORD’s promise to restore Judah’s line of kings (which originated with the great king David) and his introduction of the new covenant (23:5-6; 31:31-34). (The old covenant is the one God made with Moses and the people of Israel at Mount Sinai (see Exodus) and reaffirmed in Deuteronomy. The people broke the terms by worshipping other gods and acting unjustly.)
The new covenant is fully revealed in the New Testament (meaning New Covenant) and established and ratified by Christ’s atoning work on the cross and resurrection from the dead. The benefits- forgiveness from sin, righteousness, and peace with God- are available to all who are connected to Jesus by faith and are part of his church. Moreover, Jesus is revealed to be the King of kings who restores the line of King David.
The book is dark and terrorifying, causing the reader to shake his head in dismay, gasp for breath, and feel the agony of the people’s self-harm. But Jeremiah contains rays of hope, ones that allude to God’s future mercy in the new covenant for Israel and the nations: “They will bind themselves to the LORD with an eternal covenant that will never be forgotten.” (50:5)
A serious read, Jeremiah reveals the consequences of putting one’s trust in human beings and false gods, the blessings for those who put their trust in Jesus, and the deceitfulness of the human heart, which falls continually for idols that disappoint. (17:5-10).
