1. The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, by Dan Santat, Little Brown
2. Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, Clement Hurd (Illus.), Harper
3. The Book With No Pictures, by B.J. Novak, Dial
4. The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Daywalt, Oliver Jeffers (Illus.), Philomel
5. Aqualicious, by Victoria Kann, Harper
6. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle, Putnam
7. Pat the Bunny, by Dorothy Kunhardt, Golden
8. Home, by Carson Ellis, Candlewick
9. Llama Llama Easter Egg, by Anna Dewdney, Viking Books for Young Readers
10. I Am a Bunny, by Ole Risom, Richard Scarry (Illus.), Golden
11. Easter Egg, by Jan Brett, Putnam
12. Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, Harper
13. Click, Clack, Peep!, by Doreen Cronin, Betsy Lewin (Illus.), Atheneum Books for Young Readers
14. Good Night, Gorilla, by Peggy Rathmann, Putnam
15. The Golden Egg Book, by Margaret Wise Brown, Golden Books
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.