Living Ideas in Living Books: Choosing Worthy Books for Home and School Libraries by Jeannette Tulis

This is the working title for our upcoming workshop for this summer’s ChildlightUSA Conference, June 6-9. Choosing books with living ideas is a daunting task but one that Charlotte Mason identified as a key principle. Children are to be nourished with ideas and many of these ideas come from the books read aloud to them and from which they read. It is the task of the mother and the teacher to be sure these books are readily available and a part of the child’s life.

If we had a week, the four of us could easily fill it talking about all of our favorite books in every subject. Alas, we have only an hour or two at most during which time our aim is to equip you with inspiration from Charlotte as well as practical tools to help you and your students list, locate and love these literary treasures.

What happens to a child when inspired by a living book?

“The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause that intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea.” School Education p. 178

“It is the very nature of an idea to grow: as the vegetable germ secretes that it lives by, so, fairly implant an idea in the child’s mind, and it will secrete its own food, grow, and bear fruit in the form of a succession of kindred ideas.” Home Education p. 173

To set our students’ feet in that large room that Charlotte so often writes about, is to put them in contact with great minds and great ideas.

What are the qualities one should look for in a living book?

• “A work possessing certain literary qualities able to bring that sensible delight to the reader which belongs to a literary word fitly spoken.” Parents and Children p. 263

• “Their lesson-books should offer matter for their reading, whether aloud or to themselves; therefore they should be written with literary power.” Home Education p. 229

• Not with dry bones of fact, but with fact clothed upon with the living flesh, breathed into by the vital spirit of quickening ideas.” School Education p. 124

Why is the choosing of a child’s books so important?

• “The selection of their first lesson-books is a matter of grave importance, because it rests with these to give children the idea that knowledge is supremely attractive and that reading is delightful. Once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is — not completed, but — ensured.” Home Education p. 229

“A corollary of the principle that education is the science of relations, is, that no education seems to be worth the name which has not made children at home in the world of books, and so related them, mind to mind, with thinkers who have dealt with knowledge.” School Education p. 226

Charlotte’s words inspire us to take seriously the task of providing a literary atmosphere for our students. How to apply these ideas to our world today with its ever-growing supply of books written for children, and its changes in how those books are formatted (e-books and e-readers) can be quite a challenge.

To help teachers and homeschooling parents meet this challenge we hope to equip you with practical tools such as favorite author lists in main subjects, the top books on books to help you in selecting books for your libraries, how to start a lending library and where to find living books in your city.

We hope you can join us for the discussion on Living Ideas in Living Books.

About the workshop presenters:

Elizabeth Cottrill

Elizabeth Cottrill is mother to six children and lives on her family’s small farm in southwest Virginia. Having been part of a unique homeschool library back in Michigan, she and her daughter Emily aspired to start one of their own when they relocated. Living Books Library opened in 2006 lending her family’s personal collection to 12 local families and now has grown to almost 15,000 books and serves 50 families not only with wonderful, mostly out-of-print treasures, but in teaching local families about the Charlotte Mason method of education.

Emily Cottrill

Emily Cottrill, Elizabeth’s daughter, has a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Wheaton College. Emily has a passion for diminishing the number of “I-can-only-draw-stick-figures” adults in the world, and to that end has taught art to homeschooled children for the last eight years. However, most of her energy is now invested in Living Books Library, maintaining its website, recording Charlotte Mason’s books on audio, milking the family cow, and writing the Picture Study Portfolios published by Simply Charlotte Mason.

Living Books Library

Kerri Forney

Just like so many others, Kerri was introduced to the life-giving principles of Charlotte Mason through the reading of For the Children’s Sake. She and her husband, Scott, along with their five homeschooled children ages 5 to almost 15 are growing in their ability to live out these principles on their direct-to-consumer farm in Franklin County, N.C. Kerri helps lead a CM study group for moms in North Raleigh, and periodically she and the kids enjoy rescuing used living books from ending up in trash heaps around the state.

Jeannette Tulis

 Jeannette was introduced to the ideas of Charlotte Mason when her husband, David (then her fiance), gave her a copy of “For the Children’s Sake” and said, “This is how I would like us to educate our children.” In God’s providence, David and Jeannette were blessed with four children. Their eldest, a daughter, has graduated and studies the classical figure at a sculpting atelier in Manhattan. The others, boys ages 9 to 18, have mostly followed Ambleside Online’s curriculum, as did their sister. Jeannette loves the stories behind the studies, especially the stories behind art, wildflowers and history. She and her husband are experts at creative book shelving with the motto, “If there is a space, we can put a shelf there.” Jeannette can wile away hours talking about books, especially classic children’s literature, but fears she is a literary fraud as there are still far too many great books on her shelves that remain unread. Living just outside of Chattanooga, Jeannette writes for the local homeschool newsletter Esprit, helps lead a CM support group and teaches a CM-styled class for early elementary homeschooled children in a local co-op.

A wall of Jeannette’s home library

© Jeannette Tulis, 2012

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I Am At My Most Contemplative at This Time of Year by Sandy Rusby Bell

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” Anna Quindlen

This season always finds me contemplative. The long, dark evenings at the end of the year invite reflection. I find myself looking back even more than usual this year though. I will soon be graduating my oldest daughter. It seems only yesterday that my four year old fireball was telling me that we could not be done lessons until she saw the school bus drive by our home. But this fall we’ve been visiting universities. My part in educating her is almost done. I’ve learned so much on this journey we’ve shared and there are many things I would do differently if I could do it all over again. But there is one thing I would do exactly the same. I would still read to her every single day of her life.

We have built a life around books. I started collecting children’s stories before my girl was even born. She’s received a book or two, and occasionally a box full of them, for every special occasion. For years the only thing Emma wanted to do for her birthday was to browse in a bookstore with me for a couple of hours. A tradition I was happy to encourage, I assure you.

My husband has been an eager participant in this bookish life. He has read to our four children almost every single evening since the day our first child was born. Many of our shared memories and inside jokes come from the books we’ve read together. There are countless intellectual and moral benefits to creating a love of reading in your children, and I could talk about those all day long, but I think the greatest gift of being a family that reads together is the relationship it builds. I try to share this with parents of young children whenever I can. The most common response I hear is, “But how do I find good books?”

It’s a fair question. One would think that in this day of Big Box Bookstores it would be easy to find great literature. But if you’re not interested in super heroes in their underwear or angst ridden vampires you might need a little help. Your local librarian might be able to offer some guidance but often she is required to stock only current and trendy books.

Would you believe that one of the best places to find good books is in books? To my husband’s never ending amusement, I have three shelves full of books about books.

My new favourite is Read for the Heart by Sarah Clarkson. Sarah is the daughter of Sally Clarkson who wrote Educating the Wholehearted Child. Sarah writes beautifully about her childhood in a literary home. I appreciate this book because it is written from the perspective of someone who actually read the stories she recommends when she was a child. In my experience adults often love books that don’t really appeal to children. Sarah’s annotations are very helpful too. She shares just enough description to whet one’s appetite, which is much more helpful than just a list of books.

An old standby and oft given baby shower gift is The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. Mr. Trelease spent over thirty years speaking with parents and teachers about the importance of reading to children. His book is an inspiring source of research. But most wonderfully, he shares pages and pages of stories that are good for reading aloud.

When my children were little, it was a happy day when our Chinaberry catalogue arrived in the mail. The Chinaberry folks describe themselves as a company that “offers items to support families in raising their children with love, honesty and joy to be reverent, loving caretakers of each other and the earth.” Their catalogue is a work of art. I spent many an afternoon drinking pots of tea and reading every poetically written annotation of the books they sell. I think almost all of our most cherished picture books were discovered through Chinaberry. http://www.chinaberry.com/

One of my best discoveries as a homeschool mom has been TruthQuest History. http://www.truthquesthistory.com/  Karen Glass, an Ambleside Online Advisory member has written, “I took one look at my ‘Ancient Egypt/Ancient Greece’ guide from TruthQuest History and became a convert for life. [Other materials] are okay, even good. But TruthQuest History is better, and I’m not a fan of curriculum, usually. I really do consider TruthQuest History to be the finest history resource available to homeschoolers. These are top-notch. Although I have no concrete evidence to this effect, I have a hunch that if Charlotte Mason sent out teacher’s manuals with her term materials, they might have resembled these guides.”

Michelle Miller, the author of TruthQuest History, has dedicated many, many years to collecting books from the “Golden Age of Children’s Literature”. One could never incorporate every book she recommends into a Charlotte Mason style curriculum but we’ve been enjoying the books she lists as evening reading for years. I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a title we didn’t love.

Have you spent time at The Baldwin Project yet? www.mainlesson.com The site exists to make children’s books from before 1923 available for free! The stories are often the very best in children’s literature and are formatted beautifully. Many of the titles are also available for purchase in hardcopy and e-book versions from Yesterday’s Classics http://www.yesterdaysclassics.com/ . The best purchase I made this year was their complete collection for Kindle.

Once you start discovering the true gems of children’s literature you won’t be able to resist talking with your friends about them, and they of course, will want to share their favourites. Book suggestions from trusted friends are somehow doubly precious. I take great pleasure in reading a book that I know is beloved by someone I care about.

Nancy Kelly often shares delicious finds on her blog http://sageparnassus.blogspot.com/ . Everyone I know who has visited her home raves about her bookshelves. I hope to see them myself one day.

And finally, of course, there is the combined wisdom of the brilliant women from Ambleside Online. One can never go wrong with any of their suggestions. And if you do decide to purchase a book based on their recommendation, please do so through the link on their page. Buying books this way raises money for Ambleside which helps them to continue paying for their website and offering their life-changing work.

Our dear Charlotte Mason encourages us to build a memory with our children this season.

“Every Christmas and summer vacation should be marked by the family reading of some great work of literary renown, whether of history, or purely of belles lettres. The daily reading and discussion of one such work will give meaning and coherence to the history “grind” of the school, will keep up a state of mental activity, and will add zest to the general play and leisure of the holidays.” Volume 5, page 227

What will you be reading?

© Sandy Rusby Bell 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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