Storied Heart Project – What Starts in a Story Grows into a Life
The heartbeat of Storied Heart Project is simple: getting great books into the hands and hearts of children everywhere. We believe that what starts in a story grows into a life—the stories that children feed on in their formative years will shape their lives for living a story worth telling. That all starts with books, but the stories need good soil in which to grow.
Storied Heart Project is also about promoting what we call the FIRST Learning family priorities:
Faith, Imagination, Reading, Story, and Talk
These five critical influences enable you to cultivate the soil of your child’s heart in order to form and inform their developing identity, worldview, purpose, and vision for life. They are the parental priorities for discovering and exploring the truth, goodness, and beauty of the life that God created you and your family to enjoy.
The Storied Heart life is wholehearted parenting. The spirit of the Storied Heart life can be found in all our teaching on the Christian home and biblical parenting. Storied Heart is, in many ways, the heartbeat of Whole Heart Ministries—stories that shape and feed the heart, the thoughts, habits, and beliefs that make us who we are, and our children who they are becoming. We all are storied heart beings, so let the best stories fill our hearts.
Every book I’ve read and every story that has made itself a part of my imagination has taught me something about what it means to live life well. I’m passionate about reading because I’m passionate about life. —Sarah Clarkson (Read for the Heart)
About STORIED HEART pROJECT
Storyformed Project has become Storied Heart Project. Storyformed began in the heart and mind of Sarah Clarkson. In 2014, she conceived and helped design the Storyformed.com website to be a ministry initiative of Whole Heart Ministries, promoting the power of imagination, story, and reading in a child’s life. Her books Read for the Heart (Apologia Press, 2009) and Caught Up in a Story (Whole Heart Press, 2013), both now out of print, informed the core concepts. When she moved on to new ministry in the UK, Holly Packiam and Jaime Showmaker carried on the project with the Storyformed blog and podcast. The values and vision begun with Storyformed Project will continue in Storied Heart Project.
Storyformed Books has become Everstory Books. Everstory Books is one of the five imprints of Whole Heart Press, the publishing ministry of Whole Heart Ministries. After talking about children’s literature for over 30 years, we are committed to publishing our own resources for cultivating a storied heart life and family—books about the power of story and and the Christian imagination; original children’s books and stories; imaginal literature; public domain reprints from previous generations. We want to offer and wholeheartedly recommend for families the kinds of quality books and storybooks for children that already fill our own library bookshelves. Clay Clarkson is the Publisher of Whole Heart Press, and Everstory Books.
STORIED HEART books
Read for the Heart — Whole Books for WholeHearted Families
by Sarah Clarkson (Apologia Press, 2009, OUT OF PRINT)
Great books spur imagination in childhood, inspire dreams in adulthood, and nourish the soul with depictions of life fully and courageously lived. A guide to more than 1,000 of the best books for your family—timeless classics, modern favorites, picture storybooks, adventure novels, read-aloud favorites.
Caught Up in a Story — Fostering a Storyformed Life
By Sarah Clarkson (Whole Heart Press, 2013, OUT OF PRINT)
A guide to how great books can be a parent's best ally in forming a child to love what is beautiful, pursue what is good, and grasp what is true. Drawing on her own storyformed childhood and long study of children's literature, Sarah celebrates the soul-forming power of story to help children imagine, and live, a great story of their own.
If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory; or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. —John Ruskin, 1819-1900
