Today is the 96th birthday of this author of children’s books, four children’s books to be exact, each one a classic. We just finished reading out loud in our homeschool two of Speare’s books, The Sign of the Beaver and The Witch of Blackbird Pond, a Newbery Award winner. Calico Captive was her first book about sisters who were captured by Indians, and she also won the Newbery Medal for The Bronze Bow, a beautiful book about forgiveness and healing set in Palestine in the time of Jesus. My nine-year old loved The Witch of Blackbird Pond, especially because she had figured out exactly who was going to marry whom about halfway through the book. (It’s a chick thing!) I think Karate Kid enjoyed Sign of the Beaver more since it was about manly man stuff like hunting and trapping and making your own bow and arrows and Indians and stuff like that. When I read Sign of the Beaver to my older children several years ago, they always asked me to read just one more chapter. I finally answered them, “I’ll read only one more chapter. But at the end of that chapter, even if Attean is hanging off the edge of a cliff by his fingernails, we’re stopping for today.” So now it’s a common phrase around our house, “We’re quitting here—even if Attean is hanging off the edge of the cliff by his fingernails!”