books that work their own magic.

This post is about a book.

But it’s also about parenting and homeschooling and personality differences and what we can never fully understand and about getting out of the way of ourselves as often as we are able and letting beauty and truth and ideas educate whenever we remember to step back and shut up already.

I’m a talker.

An explainer.

I give too many details.

To my kids.
To you readers.
To the lady behind me in the grocery aisle.

And I often am dangerously close to doing the same to good literature.

Superimposing MY words on top of already beautifully crafted other words.

(This is an especially difficult habit to break as a former traditional school English teacher, as a current homeschool literature teacher and as a current co-op literature teacher.  It’s like the whole world of education is telling us to do this.  To overanalyze.  Over interpret.  Over preach, add on a more culturally acceptable message to anything that flies in the face of what we are supposed to be indoctrinating our students to live, breathe and accept currently.)

Through the reeducation of myself in my introduction to Charlotte Mason, a British educator whose philosophies and ideas have spawned an entire educational ideal and process, I have learned a great deal.

And one of those foundational truths that I continue to try to educate through is that great literature doesn’t need me.  

Great literature does not need me to fix it or preach for it or paraphrase it.

I allow books and deceased authors to speak a lot more on their own now than I ever did as a teacher in a traditional school setting.  (That fault wasn’t with the school system – it was purely with me.)

When you teach or educate in any form for several years, certain books acquire a reputation of their own.  Perhaps they’re wildly popular amongst a certain age group – like The Lord of the Rings series.  Maybe a particular book earns the approval of junior high boys every year.  Maybe there’s one book that seems sure to pull on the heartstrings, no matter how jaded the reader.

In our family, we have a handful of required reads that have earned some degree of notoriety in our own family schooling dynamic.  

Books such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.  That one is sure to get a groan and to make the list of Most Dreaded Required Reads.  The language and mannerisms of the main character in this novel garner no gentle response from the Wildwood students.  Agitation, trash talking, utter disregard for the author’s efforts are strongly expressed when the topic of Kidnapped is entertained.  (They inherited their dramatic flairs honestly, what can I say?) Even if Otto or Piper was to one day enjoy this novel, they would be hard pressed to admit it to their outspoken older siblings.  It’s hip to hate Kidnapped in this house.

There are a few popular books – like To Kill a Mockingbird – that every kid here can’t wait until they’re allowed to read it. (I have strong feelings about when certain books should be introduced – and when they should not.)

Another book in our home that has acquired a negative response and an eye roll when it is assigned is a novel called Kon-Tiki.

It’s based on a true story that took place in 1947 about a journey across the Pacific Ocean by raft, led by an explorer named Thor Heyerdahl.

In fact, not a big fan of the novel myself, I have recently only half-heartedly presented it and had not even considered putting it in Bergen’s hands.  I had almost forgotten it was on the shelf, actually.

A few weeks ago though, Bergen was absorbed in a novel.  He’d been reading for a long time before he popped up out of the chair and started telling me all about this raft adventure.  

The book was Kon-Tiki.

He’s been carrying it around, reading it without being asked to read it and I overheard a conversation between Berg and his friend who was at our house.

“Are you reading that for school?” Caleb asked him.

“What? That book?” Bergen asked.  “No – I’d read that book even if mom never asked me to.”

Some books just find the right reader at the right moment.

And this usually happens a lot more smoothly if I step back and let the author work his own magic.  If I place books on shelves and on tables and around our home, but say a lot less and listen a lot more.  If I don’t presume to know everything that would interest my child and instead, let his interests find him sometimes.

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