I came across a twofold piece of good news the other day: 1) There is still something about which Americans are almost in complete agreement; 2) People want their children to become avid readers.

This information stems from the chart below, gleaned from a recent NPR article which reported that a whopping 98% of respondents agreed that they want their children “to develop a love of reading.”

I’m happy to count myself in the majority on this topic. Reading is the gateway to knowledge, understanding, and sound thinking. If we catch our children young and teach them to love reading and practice it often, then there’s a pretty good guarantee those kids will be well-educated adults, able not only to engage in worthwhile conversation and advance worthy ideas, but also quick to spot the tyrannical moves and government overreach that are so prone to come from the powers-that-be. As such, teaching our children to love reading not only helps preserve their own future, but it also helps preserve the future of others around them.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough these days to simply teach our kids to read and then release them into the Wild West that is our libraries. The shelves that many of us roamed as children no longer contain wholesome stories; instead, they often contain pornographic and sexually deviant material that many teachers, librarians, and public figures think children should have the right to see, regardless of whether their parents want them to or not.

Those parents and families who resist this mentality are often excoriated and intimidated for their protective stance. That’s tragic, because it is these individuals who are actually fulfilling the main role of parents as gatekeepers. This is the title author Neil Postman affixes to parents in his book, “The Disappearance of Childhood.” Quoting historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, Postman writes that with the arrival of the printing press and the material that it spewed forth, “’The “family” [became] endowed with new educational and religious functions.’”

In other words, with books on every conceivable topic becoming available, not only in school but in the marketplace, parents were forced into the role of educators and theologians, and became preoccupied with the task of making their children into God-fearing, literate adults. The family as educational institution begins with print, not only because the family had to ensure that children received an education at school, but also because it had to provide an auxiliary one at home. [Emphasis added.]

That advice runs contrary to what we often hear. Parents are not experts, we’re told. They don’t know what’s best for their children, so they shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to see material that brings them into the adult world.

But as Postman explains elsewhere in his book, some mysteries and secrets aren’t suitable for children to know, and thus it is “shameful to reveal to them indiscriminately,” particularly at the young ages in which schools and libraries are doing so today. As such, parents are perfectly justified in trying to prevent their children from seeing those “shameful” things for which they are not ready – physically or emotionally.

The question is, how do we turn our children into individuals who love reading when the market is inundated with inappropriate books?

The answer is by getting to know the good ones. A couple of ways to do this come to mind.

First, hunt through library discard rooms, looking for titles that look older or classic. Generally speaking, anything with an original publication date from the 1950s or earlier is going to be clean and worthwhile for children to read.

Another way is by looking at the websites of classical schools around the nation, many of which post their reading lists by grade. Learning these titles, searching for them online, and then hunting for other titles by the same authors will open up a whole new world of good books for children. Below is just a sample list to get you started:

K-3rd Grade

1.      “Charlotte’s Web,” E. B. White
2.      “The Courage of Sarah Noble,” Alice Dalgliesh
3.      “The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit,” Beatrix Potter
4.      “The Velveteen Rabbit,” Margery Williams
5.      “Sarah, Plain & Tall,” Patricia MacLachlan
6.      “Little House in the Big Woods,” Laura Ingalls Wilder
7.      “The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe,” C. S. Lewis
8.      “Frog & Toad Are Friends,” Arnold Lobel
9.      “Caps for Sale,” Esphyr Slobodkina
10.    “Madeline” (and other books in the series), Ludwig Bemelmans

4th-6th Grade

1.      “Robin Hood,” Roger Lancelyn Green, Howard Pyle, other authors
2.      “Johnny Tremain,” Esther Forbes
3.      “Treasure Island,” Robert Louis Stevenson
4.      “The Hobbit,” J. R. R. Tolkien
5.      “Where the Red Fern Grows,” Wilson Rawls
6.      “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Mark Twain
7.      “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens
8.      “The Door in the Wall,” Marguerite De Angeli
9.      “The Witch of Blackbird Pond,” Elizabeth George Speare
10.    “The Bronze Bow,” Elizabeth George Speare

7th-8th Grade

1.      “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Mark Twain
2.      “Julius Caesar,” William Shakespeare
3.      “Animal Farm,” George Orwell
4.      “Beowulf,” trans. Rosemary Sutcliff & Seamus Heaney
5.      “Sir Gawain & the Green Knight,” J. R. R. Tolkien
6.      “Canterbury Tales,” Geoffrey Chaucer
7.      “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee
8.      “The Red Badge of Courage,” Stephen Crane
9.      “The Call of the Wild,” Jack London
10.    “Macbeth,” William Shakespeare

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Direct Media