The Mystery of the Living Book

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Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony; but we must sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food.
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 109.

“Living Book” is a term coined by Charlotte Mason, an early 20th Century English educator. What Charlotte Mason meant by  “living book” is a book that will truly nourish you and help you create a deeper relationship with the subject at hand. A living book is the organic, farm fresh, non GMO of literature. It is the cream of the crop, the book that will satisfy you through and through and nourish you and your children in unexpected ways. It is the book that contains Truth, Goodness and Beauty (so, yes the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a living book).

Passion

A living book is usually written by a single author who has a passion and deep interest in his subject. And because of this deep interest in the subject, the author, through the use of beautifully crafted literary language, makes his subject come alive for his reader. This vivid encounter triggers a new relationship that will educate the reader in a new subject or deepen an already existing relationship. The facts are presented in story form, the author displays intimacy with his subject, enthusiasm and fondness for it. Living books excite the imagination, trigger curiosity and enrich our lives. A good example is the preface of Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking People:

“Our story centers on an island, not widely sundered from the continent and so tilted that its mountains lie all to the West and North, while South and East is gently undulating landscape of wooded valley open downs and slow rivers. It is very accessible to the invader whether he comes in peace or war, as pirate or merchant, conqueror or missionary.” 

Education through living books imprints long lasting and effective knowledge to its readers. Because relationships are created, the subject of the book is now a friend and therefore not easily forgotten. Textbooks give us blank facts, in a sterile environment, while living books nourish and wrap around us like a warm, well-loved quilt.

So how and where to find living books?

My favorite way to find living books, after having exhausted booklists and books about books, is to just enter my “subject” into the Amazon search engine, then click on “children’s books” and see what pops up. I narrow down on the illustrations and title first, then I click on the “Look Inside” and start looking at the book, or I order it from the library and page through it then (but that takes too long ;).
What I look for is:
– The number of authors
– Look up the author and see if he has a passion for the subject
– Then I read the first page, if I want to turn the page, then it’s a pretty good guess that it will be a living book. 
– Sometimes the introduction, foreword or preface will give you a good idea of what you are getting into as well.
– The illustrations have to be pleasing to the eye and add to the text, not detract from it.
– Resources below

To avoid

And of course, stay away from twaddle: “Entirely pleased with themselves, they offered the child books that represented themselves, with all their attributes thrown in, their practical sense, their science, their hypocrisy, and their ankylosis. They offered him books that oozed boredom, that were likely to make him detest wisdom forever; silly books and empty books, pedantic books and heavy books; books that paralyzed the spontaneous forces of his soul; absurd books by tens and by hundreds, falling like hail on the springtime. The sooner they stifled a young heart, the sooner they effaced from a young spirit the sense of freedom and pleasure in play; the sooner they imposed limits, rules, and constraints, the more men were pleased with themselves for having raised childhood without delay to their own state of supreme perfection.” — Quote from Books, Children and Men, by Paul Hazard, translated by Marguerite Mitchell

Home education through living books

What a delight learning becomes when you use beautiful literature! It changes everything! Everyone, including myself, becomes engaged in what we are learning. Oftentimes we don’t even realize that we are learning as we are so interested in what we are reading. Living books do most of the teaching and I only have to prompt the narration, the re-telling, of what has been read to help my student retain it. More often than not, we will go down rabbit trails, with occasional falls into rabbit holes, and explore the subject further. Living books ignite wonder, excitement and curiosity. They trigger a desire to know more, to understand better.

How to

Over the next couple of blog posts I will run through my personal way of using only living books in our home education. Over the years I have developed a method to create and direct our studies using only living books. A Daily Picture Book is, of course, using this method with picture books and spans a great deal of our home education. I want to teach you to fish. Home education through living books is accessible to all and is so enjoyable that 18 years into it I am still excited about it. After all, I have to be motivated, I still have another 14 years minimum ahead of me, lol! I delight in finding the best in literature and learning through it with my children. Rabbit trails and rabbit holes are adventures that we love to embark on. So won’t you join me?
Love,
Mattie

General

• A Picture Perfect Childhood by Cay Gibson
• Real Learning Revisited, by Elizabeth Foss
• Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola
• Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt
• Books Children Love by Elizabeth Wilson
• Any books about books

Online

• www.AmblesdieOnline.com
• www.MaterAmabilis.org
• www.love2learn.net
• www.ReadAloudRevival.com

Some of our all time favorite living books:

• Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Little Britches series by Ralph Moody
• No Life for a Lady, Agnes Morley Cleaveland
• Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome
• Patricia Polacco
• Laurence Anholt’s artists series
• Opal Wheeler’s composers series
• Marguerite de Angeli’s books
• Marguerite Henry’s books
• Bambi by Felix Salten
• 26 Fairmount Avenue series by Tomie dePaola
• Jim Arnosky’s nature books
• Diane Stanley’s historical biographies
• Barbara Cooney’s historical biographies (and all of her other books as well)
• Unsolved Mystery from History series from Jane Yolen
• The Stuart Quartet by Jane Yolen
• Genevieve Foster’s The World of… series
• Holling C. Holling’s geography quartet

Taken from a 2019 talk given at the Rocky Mountains Catholic Home Educator Conference.