Reading aloud is now a lost art. It received its coup de grace from television. My own earliest memories of childhood hark back to sitting at my mother’s knee or father’s or Aunt Sophia’s (even the name carries the ring of another era) as they read aloud to us from Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible, Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Mother Goose (a giant folio edition with brightly colored pictures on every page), Hans Christian Andersen, and a host of similar treasures. “Just one more story,” we would plead; and mother, pretending extreme worry over the hazard to our health from the lateness of the hour, would grudgingly yield to just one more. How cheated is the child’s heritage from whom this untold wealth has been stolen! And in its place is nothing but three hours before the tube—truly “a mess of pottage.”
Eve Perera spells out for us the joys of reading aloud to young or old. Cheryl Forbes returns to bring us a fascinating interview with the gifted Christian writer, Madeleine L’Engle. Stuart Babbage warns us sharply of the awful risk in spurning the tender promptings of the Holy Spirit; and finally, to top off a full issue, Chad Walsh brings us a new word about an old friend, C. S. Lewis.
