• The Three Owls: Third Book by Anne Carroll Moore*
• Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive by Russ Ramsey*
• This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks Into Our Darkness by Sarah Clarkson*
• In the Days of Alfred the Great by Eva March Tappan*
• The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast by Kirk W. Johnson
• Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too by Cindy Rollins*
• Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier
• Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Pakaluk
• Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier
• The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by John Hendrix*
• Ghosted: An American Story by Nancy French
• Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea

I see that none of these nonfiction books is a biography, although a couple are memoirs and some are biographical, telling a part of the life of one or more persons. A couple of the books are rather controversial, but I found those to be readable and true to my own experience of life in these controversial and adversarial times. I recommend all of the above, but The Three Owls by New York City librarian Anne Carroll Moore was the most comforting and illuminating of the dozen books, taking me out of this time and place to a children’s literature culture of 100 years ago. If we can’t recapture or recreate those times and that culture, we can at least live in them for a little while by reading about the books of that era. The Three Owls: Third Book is a compilation of “contemporary criticism of children’s books, 1927-1930, written and edited by Anne Carroll Moore.” I would very much like to own books 1 and 2 as well.

Links are to reviews here at Semicolon or elsewhere. Starred books are available for library patrons to borrow from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.