More Reasons to Open a Lending Library

***If you have books you'd like to donate to this growing lending library, please send an email to bbookslending@gmail.com Thanks!***

You can see the current library books at Beneficent Books Lending Library. You do need to be a registered user of libib to see the list. To join libib is free.

I had a long post typed out that included my thoughts on older versus newer children's books and tolerance but I decided I wasn't quite in the right mindset to actually finish that post. I was, perhaps, getting a little too uptight with thinking about the way books today force feed 'tolerance'- which is the opposite of what the writers would be actually doing. 

And so, I've moved on to write about the beauty of older books. I'll share some examples.

This is a reprint of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. It is a reprint but the illustrations are all old. This particular example has a beautiful illustration by Clare M. Burd from 1930. There are plenty of other reprints that also include beautiful illustrations. 

Here are a few screenshots of more recently written books, for preschoolers through about grade 4 (from Amazon).

What a difference. 

When I share these I am not dismissing these books simply because of the drawings, or even necessarily the stories, since I haven't read these. We are all different and therefore we have different preferences. My point however is to share that when we give our children the good and the beautiful, that is what they come to prefer. If we give them crude, super cute, or very abstract drawings and images, that is what they will prefer. If we give them simplistic and twaddle, that is what they will prefer.

Since I attempt to follow the living books guideline for the lending library, this statement and quotation of Charlotte Mason by Karen Glass (I am guessing that is this "Karen") fits here:

Charlotte [Mason] suggests that in choosing books, we must learn to make some rather fine shades of distinction - between twaddle and simplicity, and between vivacity and life. I've read this chapter on numerous occasions, but this is the first time that sentence really reached me (from page 229 of vol 3) - especially the distinction she draws between vivacity and life. It's not enough to a book that is merely lively - it must truly be living! And that is quite a task!
Once the books are chosen, it is our job to let the students dig their knowledge out for themselves. In fact, she says, "Labour prepares the way for assimilation, that mental process which converts information into knowledge." 

Books are chosen for text rather than pictures/diagrams:
"For the same reason, that is, that we may not paralyse the mental vigour of children, we are very chary in the use of appliances (except such as the microscope, telescope, magic lantern, etc...). I once heard a schoolmaster, who had a school in a shipbuilding town, say that he had demanded and got from his committee a complete sectional model of a man-of-war. Such a model would be of use to his boys when they begin to work in the Yards, but during their school years I believe the effect would be stultifying, because the mind is not able to conceive with an elaborate model as basis. I recently visited M. Bloch's admirable 'Peace and War' show at Lucerne. Torpedoes were very fully illustrated by models, sectional diagrams, and what not, but I was not enlightened. I asked my neighbour at dinner to explain the principle; he took up his spectacle case as an illustration, and after a few sentences my intelligence had grasped what was distinctive in a torpedo.....The power of the teacher of illustrating by inkpot and ruler or any object at hand, or by a few lines on the blackboards, appears to me to be of more use than the most elaborate equipment of models and diagrams; these things stale on the senses and produce a torpor of thought the moment they are presented." (from page 230 of vol 3)

The lending library I am building will have beautifully illustrated and written books. It will include many books that will be more facts driven, to be sure. There are some DK and Usborne books on the shelves (my kids and I especially love the history books), but these can be found in any local public library, with images or wording. I am striving for the books that don't try to put things simply for the reader. I want them to strive for the knowledge that is contained in the books. It is not that I want them to have to struggle to the point of frustration, but anything worth having is worth striving.