Teaching Grace to read was one of my biggest challenges during our homeschooling years. It wasn’t really from a lack of her ability; it was more a lack of desire and interest.
From a very young age, she was curious and loved to learn. She excelled at math. She was always two grade levels ahead of what she should be in math, but learning to read was a challenge.
After a lot of trial and error, I realized that she was bored. She had no desire to read the boring beginner readers that contained only three and four letter words and three or four word sentences. She had no time for nonsense reading. If she was going to read, she wanted to learn something.
She felt that sentences like “See Bob run. See Bob walk” were a waste of time for her to read. She still gives me a hard time for forcing her to read The American Girl books and Little House on the Prairie. After reading them, she told me Laura and Mary were boring and the American Girl series were full of made up people.
She had no desire to read about fake people and their lives. If she was going to read about the American west or American history, she wanted to read the real version not a semi true version.
She wanted real life not fiction. But for a long time, I felt like I had to limit her to what she should be reading not what she wanted to read.
We tried all kinds of things to get her to like reading, but it was only when I truly embraced what she wanted to read that she excelled. I ignored the people that told me she was too young to read nonfiction books about history, war, and science.
I ignored that fact that she was too young to read Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and complicated mystery books. She wanted books that challenged her mind, and I tried to give her that.
The reality is that her and I have always had to deal with people not understanding why she reads what she does. But once we embraced what she was interested in and ignored what people thought she should be reading at a certain age, she took off with reading.
That trend has continued. She recently told me that her books that she has read list looks more like an intellectual thirty year old man than it does a college girl.
I agree with her. The books that she has read the last few years, and the books she wants to read soon, are not your typical college girl reading list. Most girls her age, and women in general, read more fiction than nonfiction. She never fit that mold.
She has continued to ignore what most people think she should read and reads what she wants and what she will learn from.
She loves to read and be challenged. She doesn’t have to agree with what she is reading, she just loves to learn.
The other night we had a discussion about books she wants to read next. On the list were books by C.S Lewis, Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, and a few nonfiction books about unusual history.
My desire is to continue to encourage that love of learning in her. I told her I would gladly buy her those books for Christmas. How can I say no to a book wish list like that?
In the past, we have not shared a lot of Christian, theology, or political type books because we didn’t want to deal with the nasty comments, but I have encouraged Grace to start sharing them both here and on Instagram.
She reads because she likes to learn when she reads, and she loves helping others do the same.
You don’t have to agree with everything you read. The goal with reading is to help you grow, learn, and think. We know not everyone has a desire to read books like C.S. Lewis, Bonhoeffer, or Martin Luther, but we are hoping you don’t mind a few books like that added to the mix of books we already share.
Our goal is that some of you will find these reviews and lists helpful and interesting. We are thinking of starting a feature for 2020 called Sunday reading. It would be a day where we feature some of the more Christian, theology, or philosophy type books. We would love your thoughts on that. Would you like a feature like that?
For those of you with kids, remember that the goal is to give them a love for learning. My advice for you is to encourage that anyway you can.
We often want to put our kids in a box of what they should do. The reality though is that they often end up doing the best when we encourage them to be who God made them to be. Teach them to love learning and watch that love of learning grow.
Lynn and Grace,
Thank you for this. I’m so glad I found your blog and Instagram this year because I can relate so well. Like Grace, I rarely enjoyed fiction and what was popular for young adults. The content was so often of questionable or poor taste and my love of non-fiction and history was what drove my reading desire. By the time I finished middle school, I’d read every biography in the school library but cringed whenever assigned a book report for fiction, science fiction, or mystery. Before I’d finished college, my WWII collection had begun and now includes dozens of books covering every aspect of the war. Thanks to you, in 2019 I’ve undertaken a “non-fiction for every state” challenge and am 10 states in with 3 more in my next-to-read stack. I’ve consulted your book suggestions from your own challenge and pulled several from there as well as some I’ve come across on my own at the library. In 2020 I’ll also be starting a presidential biography challenge, reading one biography of each president in order from George Washington onward. I’m excited to learn more about each president, especially those who are lesser known, but also to see how the flow of government decisions and historical events occurred from one administration to the next.
On the topic of encouraging your child to read, I’ve had to learn in this area too. My 15-year old son loves non-fiction and WWII, but also enjoys military and adventure novels. He and my husband share Clive Cussler as a favorite author. On the other hand, my 13-year old son has always been drawn to comic books and graphic novels, and to me, it felt like that didn’t count as “real” reading. What I had to learn was that he thrives on humor and now he counts The Mysterious Benedict Society series, The Lord of the Rings, and Sherlock Holmes as his favorites. It just took some time and patience while he found his niche.
Since college (25 years ago), I’ve finished 3-4 books a year on average. At the start of 2019, I made it a goal to make reading a priority and have finished 33 books so far. With 1/2 of December still remaining, I may get another 2 or 3 more finished. Thank you for being an inspiration through your blog posts and book reviews. And to answer the question you put forth in your post . . . yes, please do “Sunday readings”!
Thank you! I am so glad that you have found our site and book reviews helpful! We love to find people that enjoy nonfiction and history as much as we do! I am also glad to hear that I inspired you to read books about each state. I have several readers that are now doing that. I just read my last book for my challenge and hope to get the last few reviews up next week. I am planning on updating my post with all the books and sharing my favorites soon as well. Hopefully you will be able to find a few more books for your list.
My son loves Clive Cussler too! A neighbor let him borrow a book by Clive Cussler and my son couldn’t put it down. He loved it. Last year when he had knee surgery he read quite a few of his books and loved them. They were great reads for him when he was recovering from surgery. It is great for a teen boy to find a series/author like that to enjoy. Everyone has different reading tastes, including kids, so it is so worth it to find what works for them.
Good job on your reading for the year! That is great. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. We are glad that you would enjoy Sunday readings. We plan to give that a try in 2020. Have a great day!