This is what we are doing, by the way, rather than the parish whole-family religious education program. I just don’t want them to grow up thinking that the Church’s main teaching is “Adam and Eve, sex bad, be careful, marriage, the end.” I know there are issues with Christopher West, but it’s pretty solid so far, and the kids have moved from snarky to reluctantly interested. The world has gotten very strange very quickly and I have no idea what to do about it. I wouldn’t say they’re enjoying it, exactly, but I chose it so at least we would have some kind of common vocabulary, and then if they want to disagree with me (or if I want to disagree with West, which I’m not ruling out), at least we could have somewhere to start. My only quibble is that the chapters are different lengths, which can be frustrating when we only have a certain amount of time allotted to read.Īlso reading Christopher West’s Theology of the Body for Beginners to the middle kids (ages 12, 14, 16, and 17). It gives some clues to the characters’ interior lives, without overexplaining and the storytelling is so deft, it helps you accept some really outlandish situations without blinking. It’s easy to get the tone of voice right in dialogue without having to read ahead, and there is plenty of variety in the sentence structure, which I always appreciate when reading aloud. It’s weird and entertaining, and reads aloud very well. I haven’t ever seen the movie, but have heard that the movie and book are both good, but quite different. Our current read-aloud book for the little kids (ages 6 and 10) is Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

The People in the Castle by Joan Aiken