Choosing Books for Children

There are so many books available for children today.  How do we choose books for our children?  Currently I use All Through the Ages by Christine Miller to help me choose age appropriate books for our history and geography studies.    For years I have used the recommended book lists in our KONOS curriculum for each unit study that we have done.  We have found some wonderful treasures there.  Another great resource has been Books Children Love by Elizabeth Wilson.  I also discovered Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt years ago when we first started homeschooling.  I know that there are more current editions out now.   Jan Bloom's Who Then Shall We Read? is another fabulous resource for choosing great books.

Years ago Lifetime Books and Gifts, founded by our friends Bob and Tina Farewell, had a wonderfully thick catalog full of lovely books with many reviews.  This was such a tremendous blessing, but alas, is no longer available.   The online catalog is a great resource today.   I have found great books from Children's Books In fact, I have ordered so much from them in the years past that the vendors at homeschool conferences know me by name!  I was gathering a stack of materials to purchase at their booth one year and was telling an acquaintance with me how much I loved the company and ordered from them regularly.  The owner just happened to be running the booth that day and overheard my comment.  He asked my name and when I told him, he recognized it and commented that they have a big folder with my name on it!  Another company that I have purchased  from for years is Christian Book Distributers or christianbook.com.  A link to their website can be found in my sidebar.  Lamplighter books are relatively new to our home, but we have discovered many treasures from them in the last few years.  I will soon devote an entire post to Lamplighter.

Many curriculum have book lists such as Sonlight, Veritas, Five in a Row and many others.  There are even lists of recommended books online.  I have found, though, that just because a book is listed by someone, even a Christian, doesn't mean that the book will meet our approval.  I really try to pre-read most of the children's books before I give them over to be read independently.  There have been many times that we have been reading books out loud and have decided not to continue for various reasons.

So, there you have some of my favorite resources for finding books that we think are worthy for our children to read.  I'll be sharing some of our particular favorites in the days ahead and would still love to hear more from you.  Please leave a comment sharing your favorite source for children's books, a favorite author or a favorite book.  Thanks so much!

gnowfglins.com