Honey for a Chid's Heart

"Oh, the beauty and mystery of words! What richness can be conveyed by those who master them!" 

     I love this quote from this book.  I love words too and reading.  I love learning and trying new crafts.  I also love bible studies and being in the Word of God.  I have always wanted to be a writer of amazing words that communicated meaningfully with others.  Mostly, I believe, my words come out a bit jumbled and simple, definitely not worth quoting.  The author of this book, however, is defiantly worthy of quoting and remembering.  I highlighted something on almost every page of this book!  

     This book promotes family reading time and is full of great reading lists.  Board books, early childhood books, Special Occasions, Christianity, poetry, and young adult are just a sample of that list. We need to make time for what is most important in our life, and that is our children, and what better way to show them their importance to us than to read to them.  Parents are the ones who decide the quality of family life their children will have and they decide how much time to invest into their literary world.  There are lots of pressures on parents to be able to provide everything for their children these days and our culture has a lot of influence on the choices we parents make.  But all parents must make that choice on how to raise their children and decide what is best.

"What I am saying is simply this: As parents we are concerned about building whole people--people who are alive emotionally, spiritually, intellectually.  The instruction to train up a child in the way he should go has enormous dimensions. It is to teach a child to think, to influence character, to give high ideals, and to encourage integrity.  It is to proved largeness of thought, creative thinking, imaginative wondering. How large are your goals for your children? Why have a small world when you can walk with God into the larger place that is his domain."  

     The question about how large my goals are for my children really made me think.  How about you? This whole book was very thought provoking for me.  It had me contemplating the types of books we choose to read to our kids every night.  It had me contemplating the books read in school.  There is an amazing world of reading out there and I was beginning to realize we have only experienced the tip of the iceberg.  For example, why do we choose to read the Disney version of Little Mermaid when the original version is so much better?  We read the Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson as soon as I found it on my ipad.  There weren't a lot of pictures, but the imagery from the words was breathtaking. We didn't need pictures.  And the story was so much more than Disney ever offered. 

"Underlying all of this discussion is my thesis that parents who read widely together with their children are going to be those who most influence their children, who have the largest worldview, who have an uncommon delight in what is good and true and beautiful--and an uncommon commitment to it. Sharing and feeling and talking together will come naturally. Books shared with each other provide that kind of climate. "

     I hope you get a chance to read this book. If you need a good list of literature for your kids it is a good reference to turn to. I also hope this makes you think, like it did for me, about reading widely together with your children.

(All quotes are by Gladys Hunt from this book)