Books

It's no secret I absolutely love great, quality, God-glorifying books. I've come to discover over the years that there are endless excellent books out there, covering many different genres, making it completely unnecessary to ever buy and/or read a book with little literary value or questionable material. If you ever have to wonder if a book is good for you or your children to read or not, find another one.

So, with great shame, I must admit to everyone, I'm not actually a reader! I want to be a reader. I want to be like my friend Ami who devours books, who has actually read pretty much all of the books on her bookshelf, who reads books even while showering. My mom did a great job taking us to the library frequently when we were kids, and I remember reading for pleasure quite a bit in my younger years. But, I completely lost my love for reading when I was forced to read and analyze books in school. I kind of wish I had a copy of some of those crazy questions we were required to answer for English class. I would love to see if I could answer any of the questions more easily now that I have a little more of living life under my belt. As a teenager, I was apparently too immature and/or idiotic and therefore grossly inept at analyzing literature, so much so that I was perhaps the only person in my AP English class to score too low on the AP test to receive any college credit (coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, the same thing happened to my brother just the year before--I still find that quite humorous after all these years!). It wasn't until recently that I learned forcing kids to analyze literature and see it from someone else's perspective is actually a bad thing and kills the enjoyment of a great book, among other things.

In recent years, I have read a few of my own books, but to say I devour books, well, I can't imagine ever being able to say that. The boys and I have read quite a few together, which has been nothing but completely enjoyable. So, I am trying to become more of a reader on my own, and I started just this morning! I've decided if I tell the couple of people who read my blog what my plans are, maybe I'll be more likely to do it. I find that when I do read, I am almost always blessed way beyond my imagination, which was exactly the case this morning. I started reading "For the Children's Sake" by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, a book which probably every homeschooler has read except for me. I've passed by it many times over the years, and finally, on a whim, I bought it at the book fair, even paying much more for it than I would have on Amazon. But, I probably would have just kept it on my Wish List for years and never actually purchased it, so I'm alright with my impulsiveness this time.

So far, "For the Children's Sake" seems to be a must-read for anyone with children, but I can't comment too much yet. It certainly seems pertinent to anyone with young children regardless of how you decide to school them. It's more about educating children in general, and I promise if you were educated in an American public school, the ideas are completely opposite of what you experienced. For starters, when kids are young, there really shouldn't be much time spent on formal schooling each day--this should be very encouraging for anyone who thinks they may want to homeschool but also think they have to commit their whole day to it. You really only need about an hour when they're 5 or so, and maybe just a bit of organization (I'm still trying to achieve that!). Maybe I'll write a full book review when I'm finished! Needless to say, my first day of being a "reader" was quite fulfilling. We'll see how tomorrow goes!