Spring Issue coming out Soon!

I hope you are ready for the beauty of the Triduum and the joy of Easter. We will be releasing the spring issue of the magazine after Easter, so be on the look-out for an email with a link to the issue.

Our themes are "the Holy Spirit" (in anticipation of Pentecost) and prudence.

Cover: Holy Spirit in the Life of Our Home by Jennifer Miller

Feature 1: Prudence (from School of Faith)

Feature 2: Books & Budgeting: Making Wise Curriculum Purchases by Jennifer Fitz

Departments

Homeschool Culture: Online Classes by Ana Braga Henebry

Nature: Nature Diaries and Calendars by J.A. Partridge

Liturgical Year: Our Lady of Good Counsel from Mondays with Mary by Meredith Henning

Spiritual Reflection: Praying Chaplets by Betsy Shamine

Parting Glass: Drawn by the Spirit by Kristin Choate

Reviews

Beauty will be the theme of our summer issue and gratitude for the fall.
Please pray for our endeavors!
God bless you,
Margot

Winter Issue e-mailed!

Hey loyal readers,
I posted this on the wrong blog last week!
Dear Readers,
I apologize for the delay in getting this issue out. It ought to be easier now that we are digital, right? Well, we are still homeschooling families trying to pull this off amid our schooling schedules, sick kids, and stressed out husbands, etc etc etc. So, we are late.

But it was finally e-mailed last week! Unfortunately, I had 69 bounce back to me with bad email addresses. If you didn't receive an email with a link to download the issue, please contact me so I can get your correct email. Also, I have about another 60 subscribers for whom I have never had an email on file. I'll be contacting those people by mail over this coming week to get a good delivery address. 

Thanks to all of you who are sticking with us in this new era! We will be offering the coming issues in various e-reader compatible files, but this one is a straight pdf, which I think you can still read on your personal devices.

Hope you enjoy the issue!!
God bless,
Margot

Editor

Going Digital

Well . . . it has finally happened as we feared. We have not been able to get enough subscriptions to keep the magazine going in a print version. Starting with this winter 2012 issue, we will only be delivering by pdf. I will be sending a letter out to all subscribers soon--I've sort of been dragging my feet on it, procrastinating about it. But it's not going away.

Thanks to all those who passed out sample magazines. (We distributed over 300 free magazines to homeschool groups across the country.) I really appreciate your attempts to keep us in print. When I see magazines with huge readerships, like Catholic World Report, discontinue their print versions, then I don't feel so bad that with our measly numbers we weren't able to keep things afloat either.

Our winter issue is in production and should be available for download at the end of the month. The themes are games in education and diligence.

Tintin Review

Hi Readers,
The new Tintin movie produced by Spielberg will be released soon! Back in the winter of 2011, we featured a review of the Tintin books. It's available as a pdf on the mater website and I've pasted it here below. Ana says she'll post a review of the movie as soon as it comes out. We're hoping that it retains its Catholic character!!

The Tintin Books: The Ultimate Boys’ Adventures!*

Written by Hergé

Reviewed by Ana Braga-Henebry

If you are familiar with the Tintin books, chances are you are smiling and nodding. If you are not familiar with these delightful comic books, you may want to read and find out more. In fact, these books have been translated into every major language of the world—and in many not-so-major languages as well. Tintin books may be comic books, yet the amount of text on each page will rival if not exceed the amount of text in a young reader’s chapter book, and it will transport your readers to fascinating, adventurous new places, filled with mystery and intrigue.

The original series was recommended for ages “seven to seventy-seven”; the current editions are recommended by the publisher for ages nine and up—we found this guidance to be accurate with our readers. That is not to say that a younger child reading well above age level would not greatly enjoy the books. Tintin is an earnest, honest, curious, and courageous young reporter from Belgium who travels the world solving all kinds of troubles. These range from catching Al Capone in Chicago to uncovering a mystery in Scotland, to political entanglements in the fictional country Syldavia. The other characters enter his books one by one—the old seaman Captain Haddock, the policemen Thompson and Thomson, and the inevitably endearing scientist Professor Calculus. Together with Tintin they will take your readers on a journey through accurately depicted world geography and fascinating plots: a mysterious star, a treasure of a sunken ship, a stolen jewel, and even a trip to the moon!

          The Tintin books’ author Hergé was not only a talented illustrator, he was also a perfectionist and a realist: all of the cars, machines, submarines, ships (and the list goes on) were drawn with realistic detail. Hergé kept an immense file of National Geographic magazines, travel brochures, and even fashion catalogs on hand to add realistic details to his books. The advertisements on the billboards, the geographical locations, the buildings in far-away countries, and even city streets were drawn to match real ones. Hergé’s dedication to realistic detail adds a dimension not found in other comic book and helps explain the worldwide popularity of Tintin.

Author Hergé started his  career working for a Catholic newspaper in Brussels. His Catholic background is evident in many ways. The universal values  of Catholic life are clearly portrayed as right and moral and, in a famous sequence of The Broken Ear, the bad guys get sent to—well, you know where. His first Tintin book—Tintin in the Land of the Soviets —was stridently anti-Communist and attempted to expose the Communist façade. In the two-volume story of the Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackam’s Treasure, it is Tintin’s recognition of the eagle—the Christian symbol of St. John the Evangelist—that helps solve the intricate mystery. The values throughout the books are the universal Catholic values of honesty, integrity, and compassion. It would be fair to say that Tintin’s adventures are “vividly illustrated moral novels” as a European friend told me once.

          Our oldest son explains what makes Tintin especially attractive to boys: “I loved the Tintin series because they provided captivating characters involved in timeless, twisting tales of adventure involving conspiracies, plots, nefarious villains, recurring characters, cutting-edge scenarios (Tintin went to the moon before the Apollo program!), and realistic machinery. It never seemed cartoony or fake; the cars looked real, and thus the car chases were thrilling: they wouldn’t have been half as interesting if the cars looked fake!” 

           Tintin books are easy to find as they are in print in two different formats: each story in the original large format available in paperbacks, and hardcover editions containing three adventures each. Look also for the high quality Canadian produced Tintin videos! Steven Spielberg’s Tintin  film comes out next year so watch for the Tintin titles to pop up everywhere!

*This review is a revised, condensed version of a Litertaure column article written in 2006 for Heart & Mind.

Mea Culpa!

I made a big error in the last issue (well, and one small one). I forgot to put in an ad from an company that I thought our readers would really like. So, I'm going to do a little promo for them here. Please go and "like" them on facebook - they really are a neat company.

www.teawithgrace.com

They have a really classy selection of items and deals going on right now!

Fall Issue at the Printer! Mailing this week!

Here is the line up of articles for the fall issue due to arrive to your mailboxes soon!

Our general theme is charity.

Features:
The Heart of a Mother Nurtured in Prayer by Jen Makintosh
Family as the School of Charity by Ana Braga-Henebry
To Love as He Loved by Belinda Mooney


Departments:

Liturgical Year: Observing the Ember Days by Mary Ellen Barrett
Nature Study: Down by the Bay: A Tale of Two Hikes by MacBeth Derham
Handcrafts for Homeschoolers: Charity Begins at Home by Mary Gildersleeve
Spiritual Reflection: O Come Emmanuel: Praying the O Antiphons
Resource Recommendations: 3 writing programs reviewed
Parting Glass: Without Which by Christine Capolino

No Unit Study this time. We are experimenting with varying our page count to make printing the magazine more economical for us (so we can stay in print!!). If you love the unit studies and would rather have them over some other features or departments, please let us know! We may decide to do them once or twice a year.

Please continue to keep the magazine in your prayers. While we have had a good response to our recent subscription campaign, it wasn't overwhelming. We hope to stay in print by implementing some cost cutting measures that were recommended by our wonderful printers. But it is tough to say how long we will be able to hold on. If we had a continual stream of new subscriptions and renewals as we have seen in the last month, then we might make it.

As always, we treasure your comments and opinions, so please do let us know your preferences and ideas. We also accept reader submissions!

Time to Renew! and Straight Talk

Dear Loyal Readers,
I recently sent out 300 renewal cards and almost as many emails to try to rustle up some renewals. If  you received a card, you can return it with payment, or you can follow the link in the email that I sent and renew on the website.

Time for straight talk - things look bad for us financially right now. I had a few setbacks this fall due to computer and weather issues. In addition, our subscriptions are down by 20%. We had been steadily increasing our subscriber base since taking over the magazine in 2008, but have had a sharp decline in 2011. Perhaps it's the economy, perhaps it's the wide availability of resources on the web that preclude the need for one more periodical, perhaps it's our inability to reach the thousands of Catholic homeschoolers that we know are out there. Whatever the reason, we did not raise enough money to pay for the summer issue. And, we will also be unable to print the fall issue unless we can raise enough now to pay for both issues. I am resigned to this, realizing that we may have served our purpose and it's time to rethink print publishing.

The bottom line is that if we don't bring in enough money between now and the end of the year, we will have to move to a digital-only magazine. I'm not asking you to send money or do anything except RENEW if you like the magazine and tell your friends about it. I have long believed that the way to get to our market is through homeschool groups. If you belong to a homeschool group, I'd be glad to send samples copies for you to pass out at your meetings. Please contact me!

Thanks for your support of the magazine!