In Search of Good Books, part 1

Having been convinced by Miss Mason to search for "living books" to read with my children, I found myself at a loss of where to begin. To some "living books" mean classics such as Pilgrim's Progress or Peter Pan. Some will read only the original versions of stories while others will read children's versions or abridged versions of these books. Others stick with what they know and read books that they enjoyed as children to their own children. (I fell in the latter camp for a while.) Still I must confess that most of my childhood diet consisted of cartoons on television and book series like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I knew up front that I needed to expand my own book horizon to discover what what constituted a "living book". In the midst of my quest, the book Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt was recommended to me by a friend, and I knew at once that I had found a place to start.

I must confess that when I first picked up a copy that I skimmed quickly over the first half of the book and headed straight for the book list at the end. I had read aloud all of the good picture books that I remembered and picking random books from the library was rather hit and miss at best. I can't say that every single book on the list was an instant hit, but the number of winners certainly dwarfed the less popular ones. I have been so impressed by the quality of the books on this list that when I, the prereading queen, finally began having trouble keeping up with the voracious appetite of my oldest for books, I handed her the book list and told her she could pick any book of the list that she wanted to read. This is actually the only list of books that I trust enough to do this.

Since then, I have found other helpful lists of books that I use for ideas from time to time. Of curriculum publishers, Sonlight is my favorite for lists of books. With their expansion of choices over the past couple of years in preschool books and readers at the early level, there is an absolute feast of choices available. I am, however, more careful about the Sonlight books and always read them ahead of time for content. While the vast majority are excellent, there have been a few here and there whose content I felt was not appropriate for my kids at that point. Another wonderful website is Tanglewood Education. Although the site has not been updated in quite some time, I still find the book suggestions that are available to be excellent. Finally, there is the 1000 Good Books List from Christine Miller's Classical Homeschooling website. This list is a compilation from several homeschooling moms and provides a wealth of selections for avid readers everywhere. Between all these resources, even the most voracious of readers would have a sufficient number of choices to last them several years.

I have finally gotten around to reading the first section of Honey for a Child's Heart more closely, but this blog is quite lengthy enough already so I'll write some thoughts on that portion of the book next week.