My home library is my laziest and best afterschooling hack

TLDR: If you seriously don't want to spend a lot of time and effort teaching history or (to a lesser degree) science, or if you want to set your child up to do well in ELA, a solid home library can do incredible heavy lifting, and it can turn your child into a person who understands learning as a pleasurable, life-long activity, and may provide insight into POV, facts, and other mutable ideas.

Today's conventional wisdom about reading: READ EVERYTHING! ALL READING IS GOOD!

That's probably true.. if your child is not a reader. If the reluctant reader reads, then mission accomplished. And since they are reluctant readers, they're probably only reading a minimal amount of time (let's say 20 minutes a day, thanks to the ever present Reading Log). 

To those who parent kids who struggle with reading and dislike it, I say, Wimpy your kid. (Though I would suggest that even reluctant readers enjoy being read to, and so some ideas below may be pertinent.)

But I think the narrow focus our culture has on kids who struggle fails to take into account the opposite "problem": the enthusiastic reader. 

Now, I'm not one to complain about fake problems. Surely, parenting an enthusiastic reader falls under the fake problems category. But consider: a child reading 20 minutes a day is only minimally taking in the grammar, vocabulary, and content of the books she reads. A child who reads three hours a day is imprinting herself with content. All the bad grammar, simplistic word choice, and questionable content is marking the enthusiastic reader.

This is a problem I only discovered a few years ago. My enthusiastic reader, L, spent a summer at a town day camp, hanging out with kids who were speaking very much in the vernacular. Many of them were ESL kids. It was a good experience, and he sounded like himself. In the fall, he returned to our town's highly-ranked, well-funded public school. A few weeks into the year, I noticed him dropping -ly from his adverbs, mixing up subject-verb agreement, etc. I couldn't figure it out, until I noticed the school library books coming home. I had chosen our home library pretty carefully, but he was bringing home Nate the Great, Junie B. Jones, and Captain Underpants. 

Needless to say, I put the kibosh on any book that didn't pass my test. I went one further and started culling our home library, which was pretty good but had some stinkers too. We'd go to the public library and he could read whatever he wanted there, but he couldn't bring anything home that I didn't like. Within a month or two, the grammar errors had disappeared. 

(Right now, every single one of my English teacher and librarian friends is like OMG NO, DON'T LISTEN TO THIS CRAZY PERSON.)

In my enthusiasm, I also stored some books that were technically OK but kind of empty, books he'd read and re-read to the exclusion of better books. In those few months, I discovered something interesting. When the empty books disappeared, he started reading quality books more regularly. I wasn't aiming for any kind of purity; Calvin & Hobbes stayed (great vocabulary, interesting philosophical discussions), as did Horrible Histories (informative, if disgusting), and comic books about mythology (everything from Persian tales to the Maharabata to African folk tales). 

But even these books could only be read so many times, and he branched out into all manner of other things that I'd never have expected. 

After some time, I relaxed my rules, to a point. I still had to OK anything coming into the house, but I brought out some of their old favorites that I had stored, just enough of them to enjoy, but not so many that they could read them to the exclusion of all else. And periodically I would store those books again, particularly if I noticed a lack of reading variation. And they could still read whatever they wanted at the library.*

Y'all, it was amazing. Obviously with many fewer books on the shelves, I started buying new books, fun books rich in information or other merits. I began religiously combing the library book sale and making giant orders from my favorite used book seller. This is where we are now. And it was also what led to my love of comic books about history and science and literature. Because, you guys, kids seem to read nearly anything in comic book form. 

And you know, look at this graph (from a study by Scholastic). For kids 6-17, the two big factors in choosing a book are comedy and exploration of new worlds. It makes sense when you think about the popularity of comedy/educational books that focus on "new worlds" such as the Magic School Bus, Magic Treehouse, Horrible Histories, and so on. A "new world" doesn't have to be fictional; think of the dinosaur phase many kids go through. And fictional "new worlds" can as easily come from mythology as the Marvel universe or the Harry Potter series. 

For a time, I tried to have my kids read books while we were studying those subjects. I still do that with subjects where our curriculum is lacking. But for the most part, I trust that my kids will read what we have, because they love reading and because I choose books that I think they'll enjoy. If it doesn't happen precisely when we study something, that's OK. 

Now, should you build a home library? Is digital OK? Just use library books? I chose paper, and I chose to only use the public library as a modest supplement to a large home library. Here's why.

• Home libraries have all sorts of benefits, some kind of unexpected.
• I found reading on a phone or tablet to have too many distractions, too much whining, too many video games too easily accessible. I didn't want to have to monitor it. My kids wake up and immediately read. Paper books make that easy and accessible and no monitoring necessary.
• Paper books have a great re-read factor. My kids will reread favorites on the Kindle sometimes, but they reread paper books over and over. And since our home library is an education source, having them circle back to the same book many times over ensures they learn the contents well. No testing needed. 
• With the pandemic right now, I'm grateful that they get a break from the screens.
• I've also used grocery store devices (like putting books I want them to read at eye level) that wouldn't be possible with an electronic copy. You have no idea how often my kids will read something if I just take a book, open it to a random page, flip it over, and leave it splayed on the couch. An hour later, someone will be reading that book. As far as I know, digital copies don't allow for those kinds of tricks. 

We still get a lot from the library, usually educational books that are a little dry and don't lend themselves to pleasure reading. And I use the library to find books that I later buy for myself. And for those without the means or space to have a serious home library, the library is a good alternative. 

But as I mentioned above, even a small home library can have a great impact. 

I realize that this can be a fairly big job and it goes against most conventional wisdom. The good news is, this is a choice that can be done in stages, or in limited ways. Some less extreme ideas include: 

1. Store or remove books with terrible vocabulary and grammar or books that don't reflect values you care about. (As to the grammar and vocabulary issue, reasonable minds disagree about whether standard English is a valuable goal. It's worth researching some of the reasons for and against teaching standard English. For myself, I believe we still live in a world where we all make assumptions about people based on the way they speak. And that's wrong. While I try to combat these prejudices in myself, I don't want my children to face prejudice because I failed to teach them standard English.)
2. Aim to balance your bookshelves with a mix of pure pleasure books and fun educational books. Some kids will read both. 
3. Read to your kids! And when you do, either trade picks (you and your child pick every other book) or have your child pick from a set of books that you have chosen. If time is an issue, audio books may suffice, though it won't have the coziness of your reading.
4. Use "grocery store" techniques to encourage your child to pick the books you want them to. I'll be exploring that more fully later, but some examples are: 
1. Put good books at your child's eye level.
2. Put good books in a prominent place in your house, near a comfortable chair (we have a giant bean bag), and place emptier books in satellite areas of the house.
3. Choose a book to leave open on your coffee table or in some other prominent place, and make it look like someone was reading it.
4. Give samples: read to them the first chapter or two and then put it on your coffee table. 
5. Use branding to get your kids into series, and then choose the book from the series most likely to appeal to your kid. For example, if your kid likes animals, suggest Jack London books from the Great Illustrated Classics, and watch them make their way through the rest of the series. Interested in Greek myths? Pass them books about Ancient Greece from Horrible Histories, and they'll soon be sampling books on everything from the Stone Age to WWII.
6. Use school-mandated reading log as an opportunity. Create a shelf of good books that are reading-log-approved. Let them know that they can suggest books for that shelf.
5. Think about reviewing your home library for books by diverse authors and women and other types of minorities. Make sure the heroes come from many walks of life. Every book need not include minorities, but make sure enough do. A diverse bookshelf gives you the power to present multiple POV and experiences in a way a textbook lacks. Your child has years to read these books, so you don't have to choose between the Western canon and everything else. And, bonus, this style presents a far more accurate representation of the academic world than a standard course. At some point, your child will notice that different books discuss the same subject in very different ways, even going so far as to disagree on the facts. That is one of the most interesting conversations you might end up having with your child.

Every family and child is different of course, so your mileage may vary. But this is a fairly easy idea to try. If you are considering removing books, store them and see how it goes; you can always bring them back. And there's no down side to introducing more educational books to your collection. Used books are cheap, and it doesn't have to a dramatic number of books. In fact, I'm a fan of just collecting them as you see them. Although I'll be the first to admit that there are series I've paid more for because they seemed so compelling.

By critically examining our bookshelves, we can teach self-education. We can normalize life learning.  through books. We can show that learning is a pleasure. We can present multiple POV. And we can do it with remarkably little time commitment or hassle.

Three final notes:

First, creating a home library isn't free. But it costs a lot less than you might think. Over the last few years, I've spent A LOT on books, nearly all from used booksellers or the library bookstore or, more rarely, ebay. Most cost $1-3 per book (and occasionally more for new or rarer or specialty books). It's an investment that pays excellent dividends, for a nominal cost. And it's not an upfront cost, nor a cost that has to be that big. One could, for example, buy 20 books a year (cost ~$60) and build a very solid curated library over the course of a couple of years. Most kids have on average around 100 books (enthusiastic readers have around 140), so switching out 20 percent per year can make a pretty big dent. 

Second, there will be errors. I've long since given up on accuracy in children's books, and I rely on the fact that, given a deep library, inaccurate books will be corrected by other books in the same library. Ask my kids, e.g., who invented the smallpox vaccine. Hint: the smallpox vaccine is a lot older than the 1700s. I will say, children's books are not worse than children's textbooks, for the most part. See: the smallpox vaccine! Yet another reason to read books by diverse authors! (That said, Christian homeschool materials are frequently AWFUL about this, and they're not always obvious, so be aware.)

Third, all of this is a lot easier if you have fairly decent control over screen time. I'm not here to judge screen use (particularly in These Unfortunate Days). But for our family, the long term benefits of controlling weekday screen time far outweigh the short term benefits of giving more access to screens.

For us, weekday screen time made my kids compare every activity against screen time. When we stopped allowing screen time during the week, after a transitional period, the kids returned to enjoying other activities without complaint. We make exceptions periodically. For example, I sometimes let my kids watch a history series on youtube. They don't complain about it being educational, because Yay! A Screen! Similarly, it's one of the reasons my kids learned to read. We had a reading app on our tablet, and they were allowed to use it. They were so thrilled to have a screen that it became their favorite activity. 

This is all to say, if you're struggling to keep your kid off a screen all the time, reading for pleasure may not be on the menu. 

* I have relaxed my "no library books" rule during the pandemic (since they can't go to the library anymore for their trash books fix). But with the school year starting, we'll move to 2-3 books at a time, so that they continue to find the bulk of their reading in our own bookshelves.