Elizabeth Laraway Wilson - Books Children Love (Revised Edition): A Guide to the Best Childrens Literature

Books Children Love
Revised edition copyright 2002 by Elizabeth Laraway Wilson
First edition copyright 1987 by Elizabeth Laraway Wilson

Published by Crossway
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Bill Finch, Cowley Associates

Cover illustration: Jesse Willcox Smith from a poster for the American Library
Association, 1919.

First printing 2002

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, Elizabeth Laraway.
Books children love : a guide to the best childrens literature /

Elizabeth Laraway Wilson.Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-198-0 (alk. paper)
ISBN 10: 1-58134-198-9
1. ChildrenBooks and readingUnited States. 2. Childrens
literatureBibliography. 3. Christian literature for childrenBibliography.

4. Best books. I. Title.
Z1037 .W745 2002
011.62dc21 2002013455

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
VP 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

Please read me a story, says the eager little person. Or, Can I sit on your lap? Oh, youre stopping at a good place! Couldnt you read just a bit more? Familiar pleas in any family. The speaker could be a young child who has pulled out a favorite book or an older child speaking for the whole family as they sit sprawled, relaxed and content, one evening in the family room with mugs of hot chocolate steaming beside each one. The Lord of the Rings has drawn everyone into its world, and nobody wants to stop.

Books! Books contain the throb of human life; the magic entrances, fascinates, sets alight imagination, opens doors of interest and curiosity, informs, and triggers questioning. Restless bodies become still and concen-tratedthinking is encouraged. Reading out loud together fosters warm ties in human relationships. The experience is shared, and then interesting and meaningful conversation ensues. Developing the ability and desire to pursue reading is education. Thats why in English universities you dont study history; you read history, or law, or whatever.

Unfortunately, our generation suffers from the presence of a compul-sive box that spews out time-consuming, addictive fare. TV! The personal growth possible through reading, conversation, life, is not possible for many children and adults today. The priorities are wrong. Often there is no time left for the really important things in life.

Concerned families and teachers know that the number one priority in society is a functional family unit. This doesnt mean merely a location called home where meals are served and the car garaged. Parents have to create something; they have to give priority to family lifewhich takes time, energy, and discipline. Family life includes, for instance, routines such as mealtimes with shared conversation, cleaning up the yard together, reading through a whole book as a family, time spent with one child, etc. This is life.

This is education. Im personally very encouraged by the growing numbers of people who realize this, who realize they dont have to be dragged along by the patterns of our increasingly confused society. They realize they are responsible, and there are good alternatives that work. One indication of this trend is the increase of home-educated children. Another is the fact that new ways of organizing more fexible schools are being found, within which the parents share the responsibility and activities. Then we must consider the children whose parents cant or wont give them these riches at home. Can teachers help? Yes. With books! Magic that gets through to the most bored and restless child! Yet they cannot be dry books, such as many textbooks. They must be open doors that woo children into something living. This guide to good childrens books will indicate many such choices.

Today well not start with any schoolwork. Lets put our chairs in a circle. I have such a good story, I want to share it with you. And the group will bite the bait as you read, say, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. Maybe the class will come alive to the love, romance, and fas-cination of books. What did they come to school for? To be bored by pages and pages of workbooks? To decide they hate learning? To be tested so that grownups can be satisfed making graphs about them or analyzing them on computers? Meanwhile our children perish. That greatest and most beauti-ful resourcethe childis lost, having been allowed to waste away with a malnourished mind. Atrophied brains! That is what I see around me in my country. Poor America! And we enjoyed such a good heritage.

This is where our Christian roots gave us a priceless infrastructure. We had the frm undergirding of truth: Gods reality as communicated in His Word. Human life with value and love, knowing where were going and why there is evil and what to do about it. We were given responsibility, free choice, and creativity, all of lifeabundant life. God is the God of life, love, and reality. We can enjoy the creativity of other persons, and we are to do so. That was what education was all about, and Christians should look for the real thing, not some shoddy copy. So the child should be led to truly good booksthe originals, or classics, if you will.

We live in a fallen world; that is what those of us who accept the Christian faith think. But Gods people, as we read about them in the Bible, could face what other people thinktheir ideas, their mistakes. So we neednt be afraid of other cultures, other viewpoints, when reading books to children.

It is a sin to brainwash another person. We are to inform people and teach them the truth. If you are a Christian, then you have a responsibility to communicate Gods Word to others. It means living as God intended. But we arent to insist on blinders so that children cant understand what other people think. In other words, go ahead and read a wide spectrum of books. Talk over together ideas you dont think are right. Many times children will comment themselves on the content and ideas in a book. This is strengthening.

Interested? Tired of jaded, nonthinking kids and falling literacy statis-tics? Discouraged about education that doesnt educate? My husband and I searched for answers and came across a great British educator who worked at the turn of the century: Charlotte Mason. She discarded most textbooks in favor of living books and life itself. The children thus brought up went on to become thinkers, writers, lovers of learning, contented persons. I was so excited by the way these ideas helped our own children that I wrote a book about it, For the Childrens Sake. Although written with a Christian worldview, the books ideas are true to all children and life, and many have found these applicable in any case. I believe these ideas are needed more than ever by the children in our inner cities, those with low self-esteem, those with no identity or inner richesthe children of today.