Everyday Educator - Keepers of the Books
00:00:00.000 | Welcome, friends, to this episode of the Everyday Educator Podcast.
00:00:06.860 | I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I'm excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage
00:00:13.380 | one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling
00:00:20.000 | the adventure of a lifetime.
00:00:21.580 | Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight
00:00:28.840 | of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.
00:00:34.000 | But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support
00:00:41.560 | in a local CC community.
00:00:43.700 | So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today.
00:00:51.620 | Well, listeners, I'm excited to welcome you to this episode of Everyday Educators, because
00:00:58.060 | we're going to talk about one of my very favorite things, books.
00:01:01.740 | And I suspect books are near and dear to your heart and to your family's heart and to your
00:01:07.960 | family's pursuit of learning.
00:01:10.440 | And I've got two good friends with me today who also love books.
00:01:14.660 | I've got Tim Knotts here.
00:01:16.640 | Tim, welcome.
00:01:17.560 | Hey, Lisa.
00:01:19.440 | Good to be with you.
00:01:20.940 | Tim is the Director of Challenge Development with CCMM.
00:01:25.700 | And Jennifer Courtney, who is our Chief Academic Officer at CCMM, is here too.
00:01:31.520 | Jennifer, thanks for coming.
00:01:32.840 | Thanks for having me.
00:01:34.360 | You know I like talking about books.
00:01:35.840 | I know.
00:01:36.400 | And y'all are some of my favorite people to talk about books with, because if I start to
00:01:40.320 | drool or my eyes start to shine, you don't think I'm weird at all.
00:01:43.500 | So that's perfect.
00:01:44.780 | In fact, I told somebody the other day, if Jennifer Courtney has a superpower, it has to
00:01:51.880 | do with books.
00:01:52.680 | And I can imagine you wearing a big cape that says, Keeper of the Books.
00:01:59.200 | And I've always aspired to be that with you.
00:02:02.320 | I love talking to you about your library and about the libraries that we each are building
00:02:08.200 | in our homes for our kids and grandchildren and neighbors.
00:02:11.380 | And I want you to tell me why that idea of being a keeper of the books is so inspirational
00:02:21.400 | for you.
00:02:23.400 | Yeah, so weirdly, I have always wanted to be keeper of the books.
00:02:29.280 | And the reason I said weirdly is because when I was very young, I actually turned my one bookshelf
00:02:36.200 | in my room into a library and was checking out books to our neighbors.
00:02:40.560 | Oh my gosh, I did that too!
00:02:43.320 | I know.
00:02:44.320 | So as you know, I'm on a quest to build a personal library in my house.
00:02:52.840 | Yes, yes.
00:02:54.080 | Blogging books and shelving books and checking them out to homeschoolers.
00:02:58.500 | But the reason that it's this idea of keepers of the books is so important in classical conversations
00:03:05.020 | is because as classical Christian educators, we want to preserve the best books from that
00:03:12.100 | tradition.
00:03:12.600 | And given our civilizational moment that we're in, some of them might give.
00:03:19.440 | And so we started this idea really with a few of our challenge titles and also with our
00:03:27.100 | echoes books that we wanted to start, that we as classical conversations multimedia wanted
00:03:33.460 | to be on the front lines of preserving these texts for families to share across the generations.
00:03:41.600 | You know, I just love that.
00:03:43.000 | It makes me sort of proud to be in on that mission.
00:03:47.260 | I love the idea of preserving the good old classical books and the good authors of the past and the
00:03:58.640 | good stories of the past that are far too often missing from bookshelves in some of our libraries
00:04:09.420 | even.
00:04:09.960 | And it makes me really sad.
00:04:11.780 | Tim, does your family still go to the library looking for classical education or classical novels,
00:04:18.460 | books, good books?
00:04:20.340 | We do.
00:04:22.240 | Our local librarians know us well and often roll their eyes when my children walk away
00:04:26.800 | with a stack of 50 books.
00:04:28.200 | I understand.
00:04:32.020 | But I think it's very gracious that the two of you had lending libraries as children because
00:04:37.600 | I was probably not so much a keeper of the books as a hoarder of the books.
00:04:41.820 | Oh, yeah.
00:04:42.980 | I wanted them all for myself and didn't like to let anyone take them away.
00:04:47.620 | That is so funny.
00:04:49.020 | I know there were books that I was very loathe to lend and I think some bad experiences with
00:04:56.460 | books that I loved that didn't come back to me played into that.
00:05:00.200 | But I see what you're saying, where you're coming from, Jennifer, that we want to be sure
00:05:05.400 | that people that we know and love and people that live around us have access to some of these
00:05:11.560 | books and we don't want them to be lost and we do want them to be available.
00:05:16.480 | So I like thinking that all of us, all of our listeners and all of us here can become
00:05:24.120 | keepers of the books and that reading is really important.
00:05:28.220 | I want to ask both of you, I know because I've talked to you before and you're my friends,
00:05:33.780 | I know that you have always been big readers with your own children.
00:05:40.300 | Let me ask you, Jennifer, why has reading with your kids always been so very important to
00:05:48.040 | you?
00:05:48.300 | I want us to, between the three of us, list as many good reasons and purposes and benefits
00:05:54.140 | of reading with our kids as we can.
00:05:57.240 | So what are some of the reasons reading was so very important to you?
00:06:02.080 | Yeah, so we, in my home, we started reading aloud very early, pretty much when the kids
00:06:07.820 | were in the womb.
00:06:08.740 | And when we made it a formal part of our home education day, if you want to say it that way,
00:06:16.300 | our homeschool day, was number one, because I wanted to associate, I wanted my children to
00:06:23.340 | associate the reading of good books, scripture, histories, myths, novels that might be serious
00:06:31.240 | or might be, you know, roll on the floor laughing.
00:06:34.080 | I wanted them to associate all of that with the joy of being in our family together.
00:06:40.060 | And you get to know their, you're both getting to know who your kids are by the way they respond
00:06:49.160 | to the stories and you're also getting to shape their character by discussing the decisions
00:06:54.340 | that characters made or the mistakes that they made and making connections to our own lives.
00:07:00.560 | So to me, that was the most important hour of our day was, was having those conversations
00:07:08.440 | and just creating a lovely, memorable shared culture together.
00:07:12.640 | Yeah, I love that shared culture.
00:07:15.620 | We might chase that rabbit a little bit more.
00:07:18.480 | Tim, why did you and Cynthia find reading with your kids so very important?
00:07:23.600 | I would say for us, it actually wasn't a choice that we made.
00:07:29.380 | It was something that we inherited.
00:07:30.680 | Both of us had parents who read extensively to us.
00:07:35.420 | And so for us, it was just what we do with our children, just as our parents did with us.
00:07:42.120 | It's only been as they've gotten older that we had to be more deliberate in making that choice
00:07:47.800 | to say this is still valuable and important enough to set aside time as a family to do it,
00:07:53.820 | even when everybody's busy.
00:07:55.020 | Yeah, that's really true.
00:07:57.600 | It does become more of a choice when there are more choices from which to choose.
00:08:05.180 | You're right.
00:08:05.920 | You're right.
00:08:06.460 | I think for me, I, as a little girl, loved the world that I could enter through books.
00:08:15.920 | And I just, I loved all the places I could visit, all the people I could meet, all the situations
00:08:22.620 | I could try out without danger or without having to stay there.
00:08:28.300 | And it was just, it became the palace of my imagination.
00:08:33.040 | And it was a rich and wonderful place to me as a little girl.
00:08:37.300 | And I think, and we also started reading to our girls in the womb.
00:08:41.740 | And, and, and I remember reading to them when they were really, really little, just constantly,
00:08:47.800 | just if they came through the house, if I was walking through the house and they said,
00:08:52.080 | read me this book, I would just sit down and read with them because I wanted them to have
00:08:58.400 | a palace of imagination too.
00:09:01.000 | And I wanted them to go places and see things that I probably might not be able to introduce
00:09:08.040 | them to face to face, but in their imagination, they could come close to knowing.
00:09:15.080 | So for me, reading aloud was magic.
00:09:17.600 | And then we read aloud for a lot of the same reasons that you mentioned, Jennifer, it was
00:09:25.020 | important to me to introduce them to choices they might make good and bad and let them learn
00:09:32.640 | from other people's mistakes in literature or, or come in contact with a, an interesting way
00:09:42.440 | to solve a problem that might not occur to them given their natural inclination, but that
00:09:48.940 | might seem like a viable choice to them if they had read about it in a book or seen it successfully
00:09:55.540 | practiced by somebody else.
00:09:57.220 | So that learning that they did.
00:09:59.500 | And I, you know, I remember knowing a lot of answers to weird trivia, not because I had ever
00:10:06.300 | studied this subject, but because it had been like background in some book I had read.
00:10:12.040 | Like I have no idea why I know this weird fact, but it was must, must have been in some story
00:10:17.540 | I read one time.
00:10:18.320 | And so I thought it was really cool to know all that stuff.
00:10:21.400 | And I wanted to expose my daughters to a lot of ideas and a lot of interesting tidbits.
00:10:27.740 | So what, what are some of the benefits that, you know, that your kids received from being
00:10:37.340 | read to Jennifer?
00:10:39.640 | Well, one thing is that, um, they developed, um, a good ear, um, for future writing.
00:10:49.220 | And so Tim and I actually were talking about this just this morning that you can teach people
00:10:55.400 | techniques for writing, but the best way to prepare our students to be a good writer is
00:11:01.740 | to have them read lots and lots of different authors and develop a voice of their own.
00:11:07.760 | And then the other thing I appreciated is that, um, after hours of, um, listening, they also
00:11:14.980 | were able to read aloud and therefore do it.
00:11:18.800 | It's important.
00:11:19.480 | You know, we've lost in some of our churches, we've lost a little practice of reading scripture
00:11:23.940 | aloud.
00:11:24.740 | Um, and so it's important for us to read aloud together in community.
00:11:28.640 | And once they have heard lots of reading aloud, they can also, um, share that gift with others.
00:11:35.640 | And then the main benefit, those are sort of practical things, right?
00:11:38.520 | Yes.
00:11:39.000 | Yes.
00:11:39.480 | And learning to have a good ear.
00:11:41.080 | But, um, the other, the other thing is, as I mentioned, it was just, um, character building
00:11:47.500 | because we could, um, we could look at those things and make those decisions.
00:11:53.900 | And sometimes just even fellowship of laughing together over a funny scene or sometimes it
00:12:02.700 | would inspire them to want to do things.
00:12:04.160 | I wasn't going to let them do like, like when Henry Huggins is riding in a bathtub through
00:12:09.360 | the streets.
00:12:09.740 | Oh my gosh.
00:12:10.900 | My son really wanted to do that.
00:12:12.820 | Or he really wanted to be like Henry Huggins and go on the bus by himself.
00:12:16.260 | Oh my word.
00:12:17.600 | There were those moments too, where we had to look at visions and go, yeah, we're not doing
00:12:21.420 | that.
00:12:21.680 | Yeah, my daughter wanted to live in a box car.
00:12:24.820 | I mean, she just really was convinced that we should move an old train car into the back
00:12:29.660 | of our property so she could live there.
00:12:31.420 | And I was like, you know, that's not going to happen, right?
00:12:33.520 | Yes, we have that desire too.
00:12:35.080 | And occasionally our read alouds would inspire them to want a pet that I was not going for.
00:12:39.560 | Yes.
00:12:41.000 | Raccoon or a catby daughter.
00:12:42.800 | I can think of a few others.
00:12:44.860 | Yes.
00:12:45.940 | Yes.
00:12:46.720 | That is so funny.
00:12:48.140 | That is so funny.
00:12:49.180 | Okay, Tim, what benefits practical and just fun did you see from reading aloud with your
00:12:56.940 | kids in all their ages?
00:12:58.200 | So one of my favorite Andrew Kern quotes is that the point of education is to get all the
00:13:06.220 | jokes.
00:13:06.540 | Oh, yes.
00:13:08.600 | And by reading widely, you get more jokes.
00:13:13.820 | You get it when someone makes that slant wise reference to something else.
00:13:19.260 | And especially when they do it tongue in cheek or a little bit satirically.
00:13:23.740 | And so there's definitely been times where my kids are reading something and whether there's
00:13:30.300 | a true illusion or whether it's just a trope or something, they recognize it and say, oh,
00:13:37.360 | this is like in that other book.
00:13:39.040 | And so I love to see their network growing within them.
00:13:47.100 | Oh, that's a good picture.
00:13:48.280 | Yeah.
00:13:48.680 | And then sort of on the lighter side, you know, we have collected inside literary jokes as a
00:13:56.480 | family.
00:13:56.820 | Yeah.
00:13:57.620 | So there'll be things where we'll see something or hear something and one of us or another will
00:14:03.980 | turn and look at another and we'll both spout out the same line from some book or name from
00:14:11.140 | some book that we've read together and laugh about it because there's, you know, something
00:14:16.920 | that struck us at the same time.
00:14:18.500 | So building that kind of closeness, number one, and number two, the basis for conversations
00:14:28.860 | to be able to reopen something and say, yeah, and do you remember how?
00:14:34.180 | Yes.
00:14:35.300 | Yes.
00:14:36.200 | That's really good.
00:14:37.380 | I love that.
00:14:38.060 | Our family also has lots of inside literary jokes, things that touched our collective funny
00:14:45.400 | bone in the same way.
00:14:46.640 | And even turns of phrases.
00:14:50.360 | I mean, there are books that our family can quote in long passages that other people probably
00:14:56.780 | think were kind of strange for, but you're right.
00:15:00.280 | It makes for a great camaraderie and a great shared memory is really good.
00:15:07.360 | So how, Jennifer, you said you started reading to your kids in the womb.
00:15:12.600 | How early do you advocate when people, when young parents talk to you guys at a practicum
00:15:19.400 | or something about, you know, reading aloud with your family or morning basket time or family
00:15:27.280 | time?
00:15:27.780 | How early do you begin reading aloud?
00:15:31.240 | I mean, do you, do you read aloud to toddlers?
00:15:34.140 | And what are some of the tips?
00:15:35.860 | What are your good tips for beginning well when your children are little?
00:15:40.700 | Yeah.
00:15:42.180 | So one of the things that, um, I started my kids with is poetry because whether or not they
00:15:50.140 | understand all the words, they can be delighted by the sounds and, um, they can, they enjoy the
00:15:57.380 | rhythm.
00:15:57.680 | And so that was one way that we started.
00:15:59.780 | And like the Knott's family, we started going to the library when the kids were very small,
00:16:05.000 | um, you know, one and let them pick their own books and just keeping some short things that
00:16:15.260 | are lively and fun that have pictures or even wordless books where they can tell the story
00:16:20.260 | themselves, um, and then gradually, you know, working up their ability to listen.
00:16:26.560 | So you read just a little longer and a little longer and a little longer, um, to help them
00:16:32.320 | develop the ability to attend.
00:16:34.680 | And, um, so I do think it's very important to let them have some, some choices and some
00:16:43.260 | that you introduce, cause they're not always going to pick the best books.
00:16:46.460 | Um, and the biggest tip is they're going to want you to read the same ones over and over
00:16:52.400 | and over again.
00:16:53.260 | Oh, okay.
00:16:54.160 | That's an important pre-reading skill because before they can decode the words, they are memorizing
00:17:01.320 | them and that is to their development.
00:17:04.160 | And so you cannot neglect the reading the same ones over and over again.
00:17:08.300 | Even if it leads to your child saying, when you have skipped a page, that's not how it goes,
00:17:15.000 | yes, yes, you will get caught, but then you can just revel in the fact that you did your
00:17:21.960 | job well and they have now memorized that book.
00:17:24.380 | That's really good.
00:17:25.640 | I like that.
00:17:26.480 | Um, I like beginning with poetry.
00:17:29.460 | Um, I, we had some books of poetry that we would read, um, and sometimes we would take
00:17:35.840 | it places like the doctor's office or, um, another kind of waiting room somewhere that I knew we
00:17:42.420 | would be interrupted so that they would not clamor and dismay when the story got interrupted.
00:17:49.540 | It was just little short things that we could do.
00:17:51.920 | And those are easy things to do in the car and during transition times.
00:17:56.120 | That's really good.
00:17:57.160 | Tim, what did you do?
00:17:59.080 | Cause I know that, that some of your kids were little when others of your kids were older.
00:18:04.540 | Or how did you read together, all together and keep the little ones entertained?
00:18:09.500 | Um, well, sometimes well, and sometimes not well.
00:18:14.220 | I want you to tell those kinds of stories too, because we all have those moments where we saw
00:18:19.820 | it going differently and it didn't work out as well.
00:18:23.340 | For sure.
00:18:23.920 | It's, it's never easy.
00:18:25.720 | I think one of the things, uh, it actually is what Jennifer was just saying about not being
00:18:32.800 | afraid to read the same book over and over.
00:18:34.840 | When you, when you read the same book to your big kids that then you introduce to your little
00:18:41.840 | kids, the big kids know it.
00:18:44.960 | And while they may kind of roll their eyes a little bit at it because it's quote unquote
00:18:49.900 | babyish, um, they have a relationship with that book and, uh, and though they may act out
00:18:58.040 | some disdainful things, they're not really all that disdainful about it.
00:19:01.320 | They, they love to hear them again too.
00:19:03.900 | Um, and, uh, so trying to find that balance of reading some, some things that are above the
00:19:14.620 | level of some of your kids so that they can hear that better, more beautiful language and
00:19:19.860 | encounter some bigger ideas, but also not neglecting the small things and letting those
00:19:27.700 | also still be precious, um, even with older kids and reminding them that though they're in a hurry
00:19:33.300 | to grow up, uh, that there actually isn't any great hurry to do that.
00:19:37.140 | Yeah.
00:19:38.580 | Somebody famous said that, you know, if a book is not worth reading when you're
00:19:44.280 | a grownup, it's probably not worth reading when you're a child, you know, that needs to
00:19:49.260 | be, it needs to be a good book that can, can meet your imagination, no matter how old you
00:19:55.340 | are.
00:19:55.660 | I love that.
00:19:56.920 | That's good words.
00:19:58.120 | Lisa, that one of my, um, expectations that was not met when I was training my kids to read
00:20:05.000 | stories is that probably like many of us, I had this idealized view that I would pull out
00:20:10.760 | the book and they would, you know, all gather around my skirts.
00:20:13.760 | I mean, my jeans, then they would just hang on my every word and be entranced.
00:20:19.780 | And I had a boy first and he was a very active boy.
00:20:24.240 | And I remember sitting on the driveway reading to him while he was riding a scooter around
00:20:28.980 | me.
00:20:29.260 | And then I had, but he was listening and I would ask him and he would tell me back the
00:20:34.220 | story.
00:20:34.520 | So we kept up.
00:20:35.500 | And I had a little girl who could sit still all day who could draw if you wanted her to,
00:20:41.820 | but was also perfectly content to sit there with her hands in her lap listening.
00:20:45.500 | My third child, I look up one day and she is riding her tricycle in circles around my house
00:20:52.560 | and leaving a track in the carpet.
00:20:54.180 | But she's also listening to the story.
00:20:56.500 | So I had to adjust my expectations a little bit.
00:20:59.960 | I'm so glad that you brought that up because for lots of young moms, we have this idealized
00:21:06.660 | vision of what reading aloud is going to be the cozy time.
00:21:09.840 | And it's not always a cozy time, but it can always be a fun time.
00:21:14.700 | I have a little grandson and I read to him and sometimes he acts like he's all enthralled
00:21:21.540 | by the story.
00:21:22.280 | And sometimes he acts like he's busy doing something else, even if he's asking me to read the story.
00:21:27.480 | But I was at his house one day last week and he's running back and forth from his room to
00:21:35.340 | the living room, bringing toys and doing things.
00:21:37.620 | And he's mumbling.
00:21:38.840 | And I think he's talking to me at first.
00:21:40.700 | And then I listen a little closer and he is reciting the last story.
00:21:44.680 | As he runs back and forth, he is telling the story to himself as he's busy.
00:21:51.440 | So moms, dads, don't be discouraged.
00:21:55.040 | Your kids are probably listening, even if they look like they're not listening.
00:21:59.780 | I don't know about you guys, but at practicums, I often get asked about reading aloud to children
00:22:11.100 | who have already learned to read themselves.
00:22:14.580 | You know, do you still, do you keep reading aloud after your kids can read alone?
00:22:20.720 | Do they want you to?
00:22:22.560 | Do you need to?
00:22:23.880 | Do they like it?
00:22:25.140 | Do you?
00:22:26.320 | Tim, did you guys keep reading aloud after your kids could read for themselves?
00:22:32.280 | As often as I can.
00:22:35.420 | Yes.
00:22:35.840 | I love it.
00:22:37.260 | So we have our oldest is getting closer and closer to the end of her challenge three year
00:22:43.680 | right now.
00:22:44.240 | Yes.
00:22:44.800 | And our youngest is in her second tour of essentials.
00:22:49.660 | And we are in the middle of reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey together right now.
00:22:56.460 | I read it to them at least a couple of nights a week.
00:23:00.380 | We manage to find the time to get in some good reading out of that.
00:23:03.900 | And that's in addition to whatever else my wife is reading to them as part of their homeschool
00:23:09.720 | day.
00:23:09.980 | That is so good.
00:23:11.680 | So you kept reading.
00:23:12.640 | Why do you keep reading aloud?
00:23:14.360 | All of your kids now know how to read well on their own.
00:23:18.160 | Why do you still do it?
00:23:19.440 | For all those reasons you said before?
00:23:21.380 | Yes.
00:23:22.640 | For those reasons.
00:23:23.700 | And also because I know that if I don't, then number one, it's hard to ever pick it back
00:23:32.160 | up to do it again.
00:23:33.020 | And number two, we may read some of the same books because there are just good books that
00:23:42.000 | are part of what we will read as a family.
00:23:44.660 | But it deprives us of the chance to be sitting there engaged with the same book at the same
00:23:50.040 | time.
00:23:50.660 | Yes.
00:23:51.620 | Yeah.
00:23:53.000 | That's really good.
00:23:54.540 | And, you know, there's also the truth that you may read something aloud to your children
00:24:02.840 | that one or more of them would never choose for themselves.
00:24:07.260 | And so you are exposing them to another piece of literature and broadening their horizons
00:24:14.460 | in a way that they might not strike out for on their own.
00:24:17.700 | Jennifer, you kept reading aloud.
00:24:20.800 | I know you've got kids that are widely different in age from Ben to Mia also.
00:24:26.720 | So there was a wide.
00:24:28.340 | So you were reading aloud to Mia when Ben and Abby were well able to read to themselves.
00:24:33.000 | Did you just keep reading aloud to everybody anyway?
00:24:36.640 | We did, depending on what year they were in challenge and what their personal schedules
00:24:43.100 | are.
00:24:43.380 | Sometimes that reading got shorter, which is one of the reasons that I really liked pulling
00:24:49.220 | together the stories that are in the Echoes books.
00:24:51.160 | Because if I could grab only, you know, 20 minutes in the morning or 30 minutes, at least
00:24:56.800 | we were all still having that time together.
00:24:58.800 | And everyone of all ages could benefit from each other's insights.
00:25:03.300 | Oh, that's good.
00:25:04.660 | We occasionally make time to do longer novels still.
00:25:07.020 | But of course, the challenge kids were reading a lot of their own.
00:25:09.900 | So usually we opted for shorter things.
00:25:13.120 | And there is some great advice in Jim Trulise's read aloud handbook for reading kids.
00:25:19.980 | And some of the examples he gives are quite fun because he would read to them while they
00:25:24.700 | were doing the dishes.
00:25:25.500 | Yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:25:28.160 | You can.
00:25:28.760 | I'm pastoring chores is a good way to tackle a child read aloud.
00:25:33.780 | Uh-huh.
00:25:34.280 | That's really good.
00:25:35.700 | That redeems the time in some manner for them.
00:25:39.800 | Older kid read aloud time is ready.
00:25:42.520 | Do you guys read aloud with your high schoolers?
00:25:46.060 | Because I still did.
00:25:46.980 | I still read aloud with my high schoolers.
00:25:49.140 | And one of the reasons I liked to do it, I actually asked my younger daughter if we could
00:25:56.180 | read her Challenge 4 literature together.
00:26:00.000 | I had not read the Challenge 4 literature with my older daughter as she read it.
00:26:04.940 | I had read them, but we didn't read together.
00:26:07.920 | And I realized that I missed that.
00:26:10.340 | I missed being able to discuss the character struggles and the conflicts and the growth or
00:26:20.760 | the regression of those characters.
00:26:22.820 | And so I really enjoyed reading aloud with my 18-year-old.
00:26:28.220 | What makes older kid read aloud time so good?
00:26:32.340 | What can come of it?
00:26:33.740 | What do you think, Jennifer?
00:26:35.780 | Well, they just have great insights.
00:26:38.280 | They do.
00:26:39.120 | So you don't want to miss out on, even if you can't read it with them, you don't want to
00:26:44.040 | miss out on discussing it with them.
00:26:45.740 | Yeah.
00:26:46.180 | But I will also say, when you read aloud, both they and you hear things differently than
00:26:54.300 | they would have if they were writing aloud for themselves.
00:26:57.240 | You notice things when you're reading aloud that you don't notice when you're reading quietly.
00:27:03.560 | And then the other way that I was able to share with my older kids if things were busy and I
00:27:09.500 | couldn't do, my top choice would be to read with them.
00:27:12.580 | My second choice would be to discuss it with them.
00:27:15.260 | But one of the magical things about print books is that my children were often reading from copies
00:27:21.260 | that I had highlighted.
00:27:22.400 | Oh, yeah.
00:27:23.660 | Marginal notes in and we had that being passed down.
00:27:28.680 | And I shared on a book club with Tim earlier this week that my kids and I all read the copy
00:27:35.660 | of the discoverers that belonged to my grandfather.
00:27:38.000 | Oh, cool.
00:27:39.620 | So being able to pass down those notes in a print version is another way to share stories
00:27:45.560 | with each other.
00:27:46.360 | Yeah, I love that.
00:27:47.780 | If you have a shared copy and everybody makes an underline or even a pithy note in the margin,
00:27:56.180 | it's almost like having a conversation not just with the author of the book, but with all the
00:28:01.260 | other people in your family who might be reading that book, too.
00:28:05.240 | Okay, we're going to get down to this whole idea of owning our own books.
00:28:14.040 | Tim, I want to give you first crack at this question.
00:28:16.720 | Why should we own books of our very own?
00:28:22.100 | I mean, we are always encouraging people to start their own libraries.
00:28:27.580 | And I'm always talking to my listeners about books they should own and things that they
00:28:32.780 | should gather around.
00:28:34.300 | Why do you think we should own our own books?
00:28:38.040 | There's a whole host of reasons.
00:28:40.760 | I will give you two to start with.
00:28:45.660 | And I'm sure that you and Jennifer will have plenty of others to add.
00:28:49.320 | But first off, I think that it's way easier to have a real relationship with a print copy
00:28:57.940 | of a book that you own.
00:28:58.860 | If you know where it is on your shelf, you know where to go get it.
00:29:03.660 | And if you know that it's your copy of the book that you've read, you probably actually
00:29:08.720 | know where in the book certain things are that you're looking for.
00:29:12.960 | And so it builds a comfort with that book and an ease with it that you don't get when it
00:29:21.520 | comes to a borrowed book or an electronic form of a book.
00:29:28.620 | And then sort of the second reason it plays off that electronic form is those things come
00:29:36.920 | and go and they can be edited or altered without anyone giving you a heads up that it's been
00:29:44.460 | changed.
00:29:44.900 | Oh, that's true.
00:29:46.720 | And I think that, you know, even if you don't have your sort of tinfoil hat on and are afraid
00:29:54.760 | that everyone is changing your books all the time, which is in this day and age, certainly not as
00:30:00.880 | outlandish as it may have been in another age.
00:30:03.320 | That's true.
00:30:04.100 | But I think our brains know that our relationship with the book is temporary when it's electronic.
00:30:13.260 | And so it's far easier for us to say, well, that was just that thing that I encountered
00:30:18.020 | the one time and I don't have to store that.
00:30:20.640 | I don't need to, I don't need to think more about that or, uh, or continue to hold that in
00:30:26.320 | my memory because it was just an electronic thing that, that I flashed in front of my eyes and
00:30:31.800 | now it's gone.
00:30:32.600 | Yeah.
00:30:33.500 | Yeah.
00:30:34.560 | Books that belong to me are like members of my family.
00:30:40.620 | There are certain books that I read and reread or refer to again and again.
00:30:47.420 | There's some books that are so well loved that they will fall open to my favorite passage.
00:30:53.160 | Um, they are comforting to me.
00:30:57.440 | Um, and, and like you said, I have a relationship with them.
00:31:03.340 | Jennifer, why, why is it important to you?
00:31:06.180 | I know you have a lot of reasons that you want to own your own print copies of books.
00:31:11.140 | Share some of them with us.
00:31:12.620 | Yeah.
00:31:13.740 | So, well, I, I share, um, Tim's concern that some of these things may vanish, first of all.
00:31:18.860 | Um, and I will say that as many, I've tried many, many times to love, um, an e-reader and
00:31:25.200 | I have never succeeded.
00:31:26.280 | The books to me seem that they have lost all of their life and personality.
00:31:32.320 | Yeah.
00:31:32.560 | Everything vapid.
00:31:34.400 | The same.
00:31:35.060 | Um, so I, I will admit that I do sometimes travel with one because I've had some injuries
00:31:41.820 | that make it harder for me to carry a lot of heavy things, but I always own physical copies
00:31:47.040 | of the books that are on my, um, and then I'll add a new, potentially a slightly new reason.
00:31:54.340 | Um, I mentioned before that I like to mark in my books, I find it, um, almost impossible
00:32:01.000 | not to.
00:32:01.780 | And so really as an adult, I've found myself extremely frustrated when I read a book that
00:32:08.580 | belongs to someone else, because I will either want to jot down a question to the author in
00:32:13.720 | the margin, or I want to underline a particularly lovely turn of phrase.
00:32:19.620 | Um, and it was, it was curious to me, I'll, I'll tell a little story.
00:32:24.240 | So I got the privilege of meeting with one of my favorite living authors a couple of weeks
00:32:29.680 | ago.
00:32:30.100 | His name's Alan Bradley and, um, he and I both share a love of Dickens.
00:32:35.140 | One of the things he said he's been doing in his older age now is that he will just go back
00:32:43.540 | and open his favorite authors.
00:32:45.660 | And also we share a love for Dickens' Bleak House.
00:32:48.700 | He's, he mentioned that novel by name and said that he will go back and just open it up and
00:32:53.840 | read any given page because he's read the story so many times that he can just appreciate Dickens'
00:32:59.600 | lovely language and descriptions.
00:33:02.880 | So I like also just flipping back through my books sometimes and finding, um, new treasures.
00:33:10.500 | Yeah.
00:33:10.680 | Yeah.
00:33:11.340 | I love owning physical copies of books too.
00:33:15.920 | You mentioned this already, Jennifer, since you are, are developing your own lending library,
00:33:22.400 | you intend to share them with people.
00:33:24.360 | Um, I like having physical copies of books that I can share with people.
00:33:29.180 | And there are some books that I love so much that I just buy extra copies so I can share
00:33:34.720 | because I'm a little territorial with my personal copy that has, that has my notes.
00:33:41.920 | I mean, I, I almost would feel like I was giving away a relationship.
00:33:46.340 | If I gave away that copy of the book, because it's the book, that's the copy that I have built
00:33:52.180 | and maybe a years long relationship as I have consulted it again and again and have written
00:33:58.280 | my notes in the margins and my questions and, um, highlighted my favorite passages.
00:34:04.120 | So, you know, having books of our own allows us to share those books that mean the most to
00:34:12.380 | us.
00:34:12.780 | And so that's really cool.
00:34:14.620 | So I, listeners, I encourage you, we all encourage you to gather around you books that you and your
00:34:21.560 | family can love, that you can read over and over, that you can share with others and that
00:34:28.480 | you can preserve, um, and that is one of the things that makes Classical Conversations Multimedia's
00:34:35.880 | Copper Lodge Library, um, so vital and so important.
00:34:42.540 | Jennifer, tell us why, why did Copper Lodge Library, the imprint even get started?
00:34:48.180 | It has a lot to do with what we've been talking about, doesn't it?
00:34:51.420 | Yes.
00:34:52.260 | So, um, we, you know, Tim, Tim is good about bringing these stories to our attention, but we
00:34:58.120 | read all the time stories about, um, people not reading any books past college.
00:35:03.520 | And I also was thinking about how there used to be a, a canon of children's literature that
00:35:11.360 | stories that everyone knew.
00:35:13.340 | And if you refer to Rapunzel, everyone would know what you were talking about, referred to
00:35:18.800 | Rumpelstiltskin or Rip Van Winkle, that those cultural references that everyone would know.
00:35:24.180 | And it was a, a shorthand for us to talk about our community values together.
00:35:29.300 | Right.
00:35:30.160 | And that, that seemed like it was being lost and parents just didn't know what to read.
00:35:35.860 | So we started off by collecting, um, those stories in the Echoes books and preserving those.
00:35:42.900 | And then as we got into our endeavor, of course, we found more and more good books to preserve.
00:35:47.860 | Yes.
00:35:48.800 | Copper Lodge library imprint is ever growing.
00:35:52.680 | But I'm, as you said at the beginning, I'm very proud to be part of that endeavor to preserve
00:35:58.040 | these good stories, um, and these good novels and poems and plays for, for the next generation.
00:36:06.980 | So not only will our communities be reading and discussing them, but now they can all
00:36:11.620 | have them in their hands and be, as Tim says, literally on the same page together.
00:36:16.960 | Yes.
00:36:18.080 | That's good.
00:36:19.000 | And then as a family or in community.
00:36:20.980 | Yeah.
00:36:21.780 | I like that being, and that, that's one of the reasons why we advocate people buying
00:36:25.900 | the Copper Lodge library edition.
00:36:27.740 | So if they're using it in community, everybody can say the middle of page 22 and, and the passage
00:36:35.160 | that you want to discuss with your friends is easy, easy to find because it's in the middle
00:36:40.240 | of everybody's page 22.
00:36:41.740 | And what are some other good reasons to, to use the Copper Lodge library editions, Tim?
00:36:47.960 | Oh, there's a whole bunch.
00:36:50.760 | I think we've tried very hard to make sure that the books are beautiful and not just the,
00:36:58.020 | the words that the original authors have penned, which certainly are the, the most important
00:37:03.680 | thing, but we've all had that disappointing experience of picking up a copy of some great
00:37:09.040 | work and you open it up and it's, uh, you know, yellowed pages, you know, there's lines
00:37:16.920 | where the ink is half on and half off and, uh, you know, half a page is missing somewhere
00:37:24.380 | in the middle of the book.
00:37:25.440 | So, uh, we've really poured a lot of time into ensuring that these are not only things that
00:37:36.120 | are worth engaging with on the idea level or on the prose level, but that they feel good
00:37:41.260 | when you pick them up, that they're easy to read, uh, you know, that it's a nice quality,
00:37:46.440 | heavy paper that feels, um, like, like I was saying earlier with electronic versions, they
00:37:52.500 | feel like they come and go.
00:37:55.300 | Um, those cheap copies of books also make your brain say, well, is this really all that
00:38:00.140 | important if it's just this cheap copy?
00:38:02.860 | Uh, that's really true.
00:38:04.220 | So, and then, uh, again, one of the most important things is that we've, uh, we've tried to make
00:38:12.100 | the content as accessible as possible and for our students to have great success or students
00:38:18.000 | or parents to read these books, because some of them do have things that are foreign or unfamiliar
00:38:23.160 | to us, uh, you know, names of things long ago or foreign words or words that have fallen out of
00:38:33.020 | regular usage.
00:38:34.100 | And so, um, Stephanie Meter, uh, goes through and identifies things that would aid the reader.
00:38:41.660 | And we leave footnotes for people so that they don't have to go scrambling for their dictionary
00:38:46.880 | every time they don't know what a word means.
00:38:50.300 | Um, and we provide some introductory materials too, that help the reader to know maybe what
00:38:56.000 | they should be looking for or how best to approach the story that the author wrote.
00:39:01.320 | Well, it sounds like Copper Lodge editions really are the books you want to keep.
00:39:08.100 | That's the edition that you want to keep that has all the helps and all the beauty that just
00:39:13.300 | makes you feel like you are preserving something valuable.
00:39:17.300 | I like that.
00:39:18.240 | And I know that with CCMM, we are constantly bringing out new titles.
00:39:23.740 | So, um, Tim, tell us what the 2025 titles, what are the, what are the new titles coming out
00:39:31.820 | that our students will be using in community?
00:39:35.160 | So our four titles this year are Jane Eyre, which is a beautiful story.
00:39:42.460 | And, uh, we talked about earlier how, uh, books can be a great avenue for conversations,
00:39:48.200 | even with some of our older students and reading aloud and discussing Jane Eyre would be a great
00:39:54.160 | way to approach some very important topics that some of our students are, are entering into
00:39:58.840 | a phase of life where it's very vital that they be aware.
00:40:02.720 | Well, and sometimes it, it, it gives you an easy way as a parent to talk about things that
00:40:08.720 | students may be wanting to talk about, but not, um, personally.
00:40:13.580 | I don't want this to be related to me personally, but I can talk about it in relation to a character
00:40:19.260 | in a book.
00:40:20.020 | And that's a great way for parents and students to have some difficult conversations.
00:40:26.260 | Another conversation that is sometimes challenging is, um, a conversation about faith.
00:40:31.100 | Um, what, what do our children really believe and what's life really like once they leave
00:40:36.780 | the safe, safety of our homes.
00:40:38.660 | And so Pilgrim's Progress is one of our, our books this year.
00:40:43.040 | Um, and then a little on the lighter side, we have Alice, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
00:40:49.020 | uh, which is a delightful tale and full of lovely witty poetry and, uh, just, man, what a great
00:40:57.680 | book to read aloud with the whole family.
00:41:00.220 | Yeah.
00:41:00.900 | And then our last book for the year is A Tale of Two Cities by Jennifer's favorite author.
00:41:06.240 | Yeah.
00:41:08.100 | Jennifer, I was going to ask you, which of the four is your favorite?
00:41:12.260 | And what if, if I told you, you couldn't pick Dickens, what would you pick?
00:41:16.540 | Oh, well, I would then pick Jane Eyre.
00:41:20.340 | All right.
00:41:21.360 | Because that was one of the, the first, you know, really long classics of English literature
00:41:26.560 | that I read as a child.
00:41:28.220 | It is a big place in my heart.
00:41:30.880 | Um, I was also going to say that, you know, we need to have a, a bragging moment on some of
00:41:37.580 | classical conversations students.
00:41:40.020 | So not only do we have the lovely Stephanie, Stephanie Bailey meter helping us with footnoting
00:41:46.120 | these additions, but we also had these four that we just named the covers were designed
00:41:54.220 | by, um, challenge students.
00:41:56.320 | And, um, so my daughter did the cover for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when she was
00:42:02.000 | interning for us and added to our staff, one of our interns, Hannah Gilmer, who has actually
00:42:09.100 | been busily laying out these books and finding illustrations for them.
00:42:13.320 | And then we have another intern, Rachel Hiltz, who's been helping us to edit them.
00:42:17.600 | So this really is a multi-generational effort to be keepers of the books.
00:42:23.160 | Isn't that the coolest thing?
00:42:25.080 | I absolutely love seeing challenge students grow up to be keepers of the books and to work
00:42:33.200 | shoulder to shoulder with these young people who, um, have such a great education and such
00:42:39.460 | a love for, for books is really inspiring and it's a lot of fun.
00:42:43.780 | So Tim mentioned these four, and these are, are books that our students will use at home
00:42:52.740 | and in community within their challenge community.
00:42:56.660 | Um, Jennifer, there are Copper Lodge titles that parents of younger children might want to
00:43:03.360 | use specifically, um, in the fall as we are coming up in cycle two.
00:43:08.880 | Tell us about those.
00:43:10.240 | Yeah, so we designed some of our younger readers to loosely correspond with the geography of each
00:43:16.340 | of our nation cycles.
00:43:18.020 | So coming up for cycle two, we have the literature storybook, um, old world echoes, which is full
00:43:25.040 | of fairy tales from Europe and, um, and some places in Asia as well.
00:43:31.640 | So we call it the old world for a reason.
00:43:34.260 | And it corresponds with the cycle two foundations geography.
00:43:38.140 | As I said, the memory work that the students are doing.
00:43:40.440 | So we have 24 weeks of stories and poems for families to share together to go right along
00:43:46.280 | with our foundations here.
00:43:47.340 | And then for, um, learning a little bit about the history of Rome, we have our book senators
00:43:54.720 | of Rome, which is so we, Rome's history comes in those three sweeping periods of Kings and the
00:44:01.740 | Senate and then on to emperors.
00:44:03.420 | And so that middle period senators of Rome is our reader for cycle two.
00:44:08.260 | And then we have for reading wonderful science stories, um, we have, uh, our uncle Paul series
00:44:15.260 | and the one that goes with cycle two is exploring the oceans with uncle Paul.
00:44:19.880 | And although that is the title, we should say that uncle Paul is exploring these things with
00:44:25.820 | his niece and his nephews.
00:44:27.480 | So that's another thing that makes it a wonderful homeschool read aloud.
00:44:31.660 | Yeah.
00:44:32.540 | Yes.
00:44:33.560 | Oh, and, and they are fun stories.
00:44:38.040 | We have done some of those, some read alouds from all three of those, um, old world echoes
00:44:44.660 | exploring the oceans and senators in Rome.
00:44:46.880 | We've done some read alouds, summer read alouds.
00:44:49.120 | And, um, I have had feedback that students want to keep asking their parents, what comes
00:44:55.040 | next?
00:44:55.480 | What comes next?
00:44:56.620 | We need to get that book.
00:44:57.820 | So parents out there, you, you've heard it here.
00:45:01.220 | You know, what books, what Copper Lodge library books you need to look for that are new additions
00:45:07.140 | coming out that your challenge students will see in community.
00:45:10.960 | And now Jennifer has told us which cycle two readers would be a great addition to your library
00:45:18.700 | for summer or fall read alouds at home, um, this coming year.
00:45:25.060 | Well, it's about time for us to end this episode.
00:45:29.520 | Is there any last word that you want to offer as a keeper of the book, Jennifer or Tim?
00:45:36.920 | Just that I hope we've inspired our listeners to start to own some of their own books and
00:45:42.200 | to build their family library of whatever size.
00:45:44.880 | It doesn't have to be thousands of volumes, as long as you pick a few really good ones to
00:45:49.700 | own.
00:45:49.920 | And then I'm hoping to also hand those down to my children that we can all have that family
00:45:56.660 | heritage.
00:45:57.220 | Yep.
00:45:58.000 | A heritage of reading.
00:45:59.280 | That's cool.
00:45:59.860 | Tim, what about you?
00:46:00.720 | One final plug to be a keeper of the book.
00:46:03.800 | Yeah.
00:46:04.620 | Read early, read often, and read widely.
00:46:07.140 | Oh, that is awesome advice.
00:46:10.220 | Okay, guys, you've gotten all the good advice.
00:46:13.080 | Go and build your library and enjoy reading along the way.
00:46:17.440 | And I'll see you next week.
00:46:18.740 | Bye-bye.
00:46:19.600 | you
00:46:20.100 | you
00:46:20.600 | you
00:46:21.100 | you
00:46:21.600 | you
00:46:22.100 | you
00:46:22.600 | you
00:46:24.660 | you
00:46:25.160 | Thank you.