The Civilized Reader

Edited by William and Amy Fahey, The Civilized Reader joyfully reviews classic, good books — books that will enrich the life of your family and the minds of your children.

May 19, 2012

Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

How does a wooden puppet become a real boy? How does one tame a wild boy full of spirit? When does a boy become a man? What is the art of educating the young to become refined and civilized? Pinocchio…

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May 10, 2012

The Arabian Nights

by Dr. Giuseppe Butera

“Be sure that you wake me an hour before the dawn, and speak to me in these words: ‘My sister, if you are not asleep, I beg you, before the sun rises, to tell me one of your charming stories.’…

May 3, 2012

Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” In this one of his most famous lines, Robert Louis Stevenson presents us with a metaphor of the child as…

April 26, 2012

A Tuscan Childhood

by Kathleen Blum

If our children are ever to fight the deracination of modern life by being builders of Catholic culture, they must first be romanced by it, must learn what it can look like and feel like and, yes, especially after another long Lent, even taste like.

April 19, 2012

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

“They are three very strange old ladies,” said Quicksilver, laughing. “They have but one eye among them, and only one tooth. Moreover, you must find them out by starlight, or in the dusk of evening; for they never show themselves…

April 12, 2012

All Happy Trails Lead West

by Michael Platt

A lot of good books have come out of the West. They have been written by men and by women and may be read by girls and by boys. It is no wonder that so many appear on John Senior’s…

April 2, 2012

A Poet of the Passion of Christ

by Christopher Blum

To T. S. Eliot, the poet’s function is a kind of mediation between experience and language. In great poetry, he suggested, “there is always the communication of some new experience, or some fresh understanding of the familiar, or the experience…

March 29, 2012

Hilaire Belloc, Cautionary Tales and Bad Child’s Book of Beasts

by James Vogel

I remember the first time I read John Senior’s Death of Christian Culture. That it ended with a reading list was, well, something of a surprise. There was everyone you would expect—Dickens and Scott, Austen and Wister—and some I had…

March 22, 2012

Russell Kirk on the Moral Imagination

by Russell Kirk

In the franchise bookshops of the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred eighty-one, the shelves are crowded with the prickly pears and the Dead Sea fruit of literary decadence. Yet no civilization rests forever content with literary boredom…

March 19, 2012

Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

“The clever men at Oxford Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half a much As intelligent Mr. Toad!” A human being can be at home in the world just as he…

March 12, 2012

What is Poetic Knowledge?

by Kirk Kramer

Editor’s note: Since so many people have responded favorably to the Civilized Reader column with requests for more information about John Senior and his educational vision, it seemed appropriate to republish this review of James Taylor’s Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery…

March 8, 2012

Peter Rabbit

by Therese Conte

“Once upon a time, there were four little Rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter…” so begins a series of delightful tales of the lives and adventures of woodland creatures and farm animals. Penned by Beatrix Potter…

March 1, 2012

Shakespeare Good and Great

by Michael Platt

Well did John Senior advise parents and teachers to prepare today’s youngsters for great study, with experiences of the good, such as gardening, graceful dancing, and gazing at the stars dancing above, and also making sure to delight in a…

February 23, 2012

Household Stories of the Brothers Grimm

by Mitchell Kalpakgian

“It was the middle of winter, and the snow-flakes were falling like feathers from the sky, and a queen sat at her window working, and her embroidery-frame was of ebony. And as she worked, gazing at times out on the…

February 15, 2012

The End of the Affair

by William Fahey

It is officially over. I should admit that publicly, shameful and embarrassing though it may be. It pains me to think back over these years. When I first met her I cannot exactly recall (I had heard her name before…