Our Home Library
Educating the WholeHearted Child: Chapter 7
Oh, what a dangerous chapter this was! I have been building a personal library since I was a child, and the Clarksons have now helped me justify my compulsion to fill our home with good books.
“A growing home library is absolutely essential for a WholeHearted Learning approach to home education… Just remember, books are an investment. They have intellectual asset value. They are nonconsumable curricula that can be used with every child, then with their children, and passed on to succeeding generations. Books are worth it” (page 128).
AMEN!
Some things in Educating the WholeHearted Child have challenged me as they exposed my inadequacies. Others have encouraged me as I see things I am already doing (or at least heading toward). But I doubt there will be any other standards in this book that I even come close to attaining to the extent that I have already met their challenge to build up a family library.
So rather than a lengthy post, I thought I’d share some pictures. These are only the “tidy” book areas, because as Margaret E. Sangster said (quoted in the sidebar on page 130), “To the genuine lover of books no house is completely furnished which has not a good many of them, not arranged formally in one room, but scattered all over the house.” There are several baskets (and stacks) that didn’t make it into any pictures.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve probably already seen our main library in the school room:
But I don’t think I’ve ever shared what our living room wall looks like:
That still wasn’t enough space for me so here’s the entrance to our guest room:
And a little back corner of the guest room (with 2 shelves in double rows, and yes, that box on the right and the one underneath it are filled with books, as are the cupboards under the shelf):
And of course the kids have little mini-libraries in their room. Here’s Arianna’s shelf (minus the books in her bed):
And here’s the boys’ shelf:
I know it doesn’t look like much, but that’s because their beds usually look like this:
I cleared out Ian’s bed this week and it had to have had at least 30 books in it. But I’m not complaining. I’m too busy bursting with pride! Yes, it’s a sickness, and I think it’s contagious.
I love this sidebar quote from Henry Ward Beecher on page 129: “No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! … It is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.”
I don’t know if I’d go that far, it’s nice to know I’m not alone in my desire to surround my children (literally) with good books. And I don’t think there’s any danger of them being cheated in this way!
Each Mentoring Monday I share my reflections on what I’ve been learning from my “paper mentors.” I am currently joining in a book discussion of Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay Clarkson (with Sally Clarkson), so my Monday posts are all being sparked by things I’m reading in this fabulous book!