1. The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Daywalt, Oliver Jeffers (Illus.), Philomel
2. Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, Clement Hurd (Illus.), Harper
3. An Otis Christmas, by Loren Long, Philomel
4. How the Grinch Stole Christmas, by Dr. Seuss, Random House
5. The Elf on the Shelf, by Carol Abersoldt, Coe Steinwart (Illus.), CCA and B
6. The Christmas Wish, by Lori Evert, Random House
7. The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg, Houghton Mifflin
8. Cinders: A Chicken Cinderella, by Jan Brett, Putnam
9. The Night Before Christmas, by Clement Clarke Moore, Holly Hobbie (Illus.), Little Brown
10. Ladybug Girl and the Big Snow, by Jacky Davis, David Soman (Illus.), Dial
11. Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, Harper
12. Santa!: A Scanimation Picture Book, by Rufus Butler Seder, Workman
13. Journey, by Aaron Becker, Candlewick
14. Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, by Sherri Duskey Rinker, Tom Lichtenheld (Illus.), Chronicle
15. The Night Before Christmas, by Clement C. Moore, Charles Santore (Illus.), Applesauce Press
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
