Honey For A Child's Heart

“Kids don’t stumble on good books by themselves. They read the titles they’re given.” –Gladys Hunt

I’ve been somewhat convicted that I should be more intentional about what our kids read. Because our kids do read. A lot. We go through upwards of thirty books from the library, as often as once a week. Ellie’s favorite thing to do is sit at the table with a snack and read through books non-stop: it’s a miraculous act of self-parenting. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when all the kids do that!

Ellie’s at the stage where Easy-To-Read books are too boring, but it takes a lot of concentration for her to make it through a regular chapter book; what she likes are chapter books with illustrations. E.B. White, Junie B. Jones (though my sister brought up there are some questionable behaviors in those books), Roald Dahl, and now she’s going through the Magic Treehouse books by Osbourne. Eric, in typical stubborn fashion, refuses to do any reading lessons with me; I’ve no idea how close he is to reading, but he certainly enjoys flipping through books as if he can. Still picture books, especially ones about pirates, dinosaurs, or star wars. Elijah is loving the Martin books illustrated by Eric Carle.

Lately when we go to the library, I haven’t been too active about picking out books for them; I’ll generally direct Ellie to where the books of a few prolific authors reside, and let her pick them out. In the picture book section, we head towards Bill Peet, Stephen Kellogg, Jan and Stan Berenstien, Jan Brett, Mercer Mayer, Max Lucado, London for Froggy books.

But we’ve ran out of new books to try, and I’ve gotten lax about what the kids check out. I’m always trying to talk Eric out of some violent graphic star wars spin-off novel. I’ve also gotten lax about actually sitting down to read to the kids: I was fanatical about doing that with Ellie, but I haven’t been nearly as conscientious with the others.

One BSF home lesson referenced Gladys Hunt’s book Honey for a Child’s Heart, which has a lot of book suggestions. I found a few websites that had lists distilled from that book, or other helpful lists in general:

Exodus Books

Classical Homeschooling resource

Various booklists someone assembled

I came up with a huge list of books and authors for various levels, which I printed out and stashed in the library bag. Tons of new authors and titles, which I’m just as excited to read as they hopefully will be. Read on!