In years past, this annual read-aloud round-up consisted of the top books we enjoyed together from the previous twelve months. However, this year, I'm mixing things up. A large portion of our read-aloud time was spent enjoying the Chronicles of Narnia. Since it's difficult to rank books in a series, as they are best read in sequential order, I've decided to throw in some of the books that my kids have read individually.
Last month at my book club, I was handed a title that I knew nothing about. Since I'm not in charge of choosing our monthly selections, I'm usually ignorant about the novels until cracking them open.
While I was not familiar with that particular book, I did recognize the name of the author. She had written a middle-grade fiction a few years ago that had garnered multiple awards from the ALA (red flag #1--I don't let my kids read most modern award winners.) Her second title was also a middle grade and one that I had decided against when vetting it for my other book club, a tween/teen group I lead for my son and his friends. If memory serves, it included inappropriate language and lots of cultural name-dropping (red flag #2).
According to the Pew Research Center, the number of kids who are reading just for fun is at the lowest it's been since 1984. Kids aren't reading for the sheer enjoyment of reading anymore.
I would argue that it's because we've trained them to hate books. In our proclivity to drill and kill with worksheets in order that we might have concrete written proof that they've not only read the material but that they fully understand it, we've turned pleasure reading into an assignment. It's no longer fun anymore.
At the close of every calendar year, usually on some cold December afternoon, I pull out my running list of "Books We've Read Together" and invite my kids to have a lengthy and impassioned discussion about which books from the past twelve months we liked the most.
We take an official vote to determine our top five to ten titles. Since we are a living book-style homeschool, we read dozens and dozens of books each year for our content subjects like Bible, science, and history. But, I don't include any of those titles in our vote. Our poll is limited to read alouds--books I read to them every afternoon for fun, for family connection, for literary adventure.
Libby has been a kind companion to me this past month. Even during a rather busy season, I've been able to slam through a handful of titles that I've been wanting to vet for the tween/teen book club I host for my son and his friends. Listening to these middle grades on the free library audiobook app has allowed me to save my focused reading time for print books of my own choosing.
This past Thursday, I hosted the first meeting of the year for my son's tween/teen book club. Since there are six new members, we used quite a bit of our time to get to know one another. It was an hour of introductions, kid-lit trivia, and general chatter among bookish people. We had not yet voted on a book for the month, so after selecting one, we focused our discussion on how best to give a book recommendation and how to know if a recommended book is right for our own personal reading lives.
This past weekend while speaking at the annual North Dakota Homeschool Association conference, I received a lovely card from Wendy, a long-time blog follower, thanking me for creating this little community on the web. At the end of the note, she mentioned that these monthly What We're Reading posts are her favorites to read.
I hear that a lot.
Turns out, people who like to read, like to read about what others are reading.
We're now deep into the first month of the new year and while my kids and I have started many books these past few weeks, we haven't really gotten to read very few pages from any of them. I blame The Great British Baking Show.
We discovered the show just after Christmas. Apparently, we were the only people on the planet who hadn't seen a single episode during quarantine. Since then, we've spent way too much time watching Season 1 in the evenings instead of reading. But, these are wonky times. And sometimes, weird days demand a change of scenery...or media consumption, as it were.
Isaiah 45:3 puts it this way, "I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name."
2020 had its dark moments, to be sure. But there were also treasures sprinkled in it too! As I reflect on the last 365 days, I prefer to focus on those.
Two treasures, in particular, stand out to me.
I've hit the reading lottery this month! At the end of November, I chose to start two books written by new-to-me authors--one fiction and one non-fiction.
I knew that my selections were quite a risk considering I just came off a month of reading so-so titles.
But since both books came highly recommended by my Instagram community, I decided to be brave and hope for the best.
I'm so glad I did. They each have been fantastic! Admittedly, I haven't been able to chip away at either one quite as much as I'd like to in these past few weeks because of necessary Christmas prep, but I've kept them close at hand, reading as much as possible in the nooks and crannies of my days.
The other day, my youngest three sons asked if they could have a later bedtime in order that they could stay up to read.
Of course, I let them. Since we homeschool and are never at the mercy of someone else's arbitrary start time, my husband and I are pretty flexible with both bedtimes and wake up calls, especially when books are involved.
Trouble was, while the older of the two boys already had books in hand and were ready to hunker down under the covers to enjoy one literary adventure or another, their younger brother couldn't seem to find a book that looked interesting.
