Book Review: The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule

The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections is a wonderful resource for anyone who wishes to nurture a more meaningful family life. Through simple projects and mindful parenting, author Amanda Blake Soule shares ways to foster the connections that make a healthy loving family. The projects in her book range from felt blocks, freezer paper stencils to building everyday family rituals.

Soule stresses the importance of allowing children to connect to natural world outdoors whether it be in a city park or the beaches of Maine.

When I am with my children out in the world…I watch them weave their way around the trees in a forest; jump into the ocean with abandon; and wrap their hands around a pine tree as they climb, getting covered in sap and loving the sticky feeling on their fingers.  They aren’t worried about tripping on the roots above the ground, whether or not the water is too cold, whether they have dry clothes to change into, or how many days it will be before all the sap is washed off their hands.  These details are the details of adults.  It is the job of children to just be in the world.  To know it and to fall in love with it.

The Creative Family is a book about building connections.  The connection between a small ladybug traveling the length of your garden bed, the wide world that extends beyond your front door and the mindfulness you bring to the home behind it.