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The Importance of Good Literature to Spiritual Development
Here are two poets with two very different ways of achieving the same effect: you and your children together delighting in clever word-play and poetic silliness:
These poets are separated by three quarters of a century and by two different cultures. A. A. Milne writes with a refined silliness, from within the sense and sensibilities of upper class Britain in the first quarter of the 1900's. Jack Prelutsky's irreverent silliness has its roots in the personality of contemporary America. A. A. Milne's world now seems the stuff of fantasy: nurseries and nannies, Kings, Queens and sixpences. We are more familiar with Prelutsky's world of hamburgers, TV, and public school. Their poems differ in tone and content. Yet both these poets share a great pleasure in words and word play; and they both are big kids at heart - in tune with the kid joys, kid fears, kid sillinesses.
If you want to grasp a quick sense of the differences between these books just take one look at their respective illustrations. James Stevenson and Ernest H. Shepard capture the tone of the poems they are illustrating perfectly.
To get you started here are some highlights from each book:
When We Were Very Young: Four Friends; Lines and Squares; Market Square; Disobedience; Rice Pudding; The King's Breakfast
Now We are Six: King John's Christmas; Binker; and of course (for six year olds) the title poem called "The End"
The New Kid on the Block: Jellyfish Stew; I wonder why Dad is so Thoroughly Mad; Louder than a Clap of Thunder; Bleezers Ice Cream; Be Glad your Nose is on Your Face; My Mother says I'm Sickening; Today is Very Boring; I'd Never Eat a Beet.
Suggested listening level: K and up
Tuck Everlasting: Can we be wrong about what we think we want the most? What if you found a fountain that made the drinker never die? Would you drink from it? What do you think other people might do, and with what consequences? Tuck Everlasting invites you and your child to think together about a big topic: our mortality. The book contemplates life and death in a way that is life-affirming, not morbid or scary. While it makes us think about death, the book celebrates the best things about life: love, kindness, loyalty, and the risks we take for the sake of others.
Suggested listening level: 3rd grade and up
Pippi Longstocking: Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking (Pippi for short) is one of the most delightful and outrageous heroines in all of children's literature. With the strength of many men, she lives alone in the wonderful mansion Villa Villekulla. She creates rollicking, joyous, silly, wonderful mayhem with her friends Tommy and Annika, the ordinary children who live next door.
Pippi is an anarchist. She pursues her passions unhampered by any social rules. She might not teach your kids the importance of getting to bed on time, or the benefits of healthy meals, or the rewards of formal education - but she will infect you and your children with her exuberant love of life. Somebody else can teach your children manners; Pippi will inspire them with her kindness and generosity and loyalty. Your children can learn to defer to authority elsewhere; Pippi will model a joyful self-assurance and clever resourcefulness as she takes into her own hands matters of protecting the helpless and standing up for the underprivileged.
Reading aloud brings you and your child together. But each book does that connecting in a different way. Tuck Everlasting invites your child to enter your adult world to think like an adult about life. In Tuck, the connection you have with your child happens in the world of adult perspective. The opposite is true with Pippi. Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking invites you to enter into your child's world to frolic together in the unabashedly child-centered universe of Villa Villekulla. (There are two Pippi sequels, Pippi Goes on Board and Pippi in the South Seas, all equally jubilant).
Suggested listening level: K and up
Omri is faced with issues of responsibility normally not faced by a child, when he brings to life a three inch plastic Indian. The story is exciting and beautifully written. The book couples its fantastic premise with a vividly realistic rendering of the characters and the situations that arise. It makes the reader think about the responsibilities that accompany friendship and love. The book also explores the issue of how what we believe affects how we relate to our world. Little Bear, the Indian, is a wonderfully drawn character whose faith enables him to take in the world for what it really is and face it with courage and dignity. This book is a part of a series.
Suggested listening level: 2nd grade and up
There are people who would argue that this is the best children's book ever written. It has an unlikely subject for a children's story: a sour, tyrannical orphaned girl and her invalid cousin isolated in the manor of a depressed widower. It is what the story does with this subject matter is magically life-affirming. Beautifully written and psychologically astute, the story tells of the transformation of these characters as they in turn transform an abandoned secret garden. The story is a celebration of childhood and of human kindness and of the healing power of nature.
Suggested listening level: 2nd grade and up
There are moments of interaction with children when adults slip into a merry silliness that makes for a special kind of kid-adult connection. Reading My Father's Dragon and its two sequels will create some moments like this for you and your child. For starters the hero's name is Elmer Elevator. The story is told with a playful, jolly, delightfully zany imagination that draws reader and listener into a companionship of silliness. This is not an ironic, sarcastic silliness sometimes present in children's books. These are very joyful books, full of concern for and desire to help unfortunate cats and dragons.
Suggested listening level: Kindergarten and up
Many families will already have read this series, but a Christian book list would not be complete without it. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the best known of the set. While not exactly an allegory, its plot closely parallels and is an interpretation of Christ's Passion.
Suggested listening level: 2nd grade and up
This classic five-book fantasy series is based loosely on Welsh mythology. The final book in the series, The High King, won the Newberry Medal. The series tells a wonderful story of friendship among a band of odd but loveable characters as they fight evil in the land of Prydain. We watch the hero, Taran, develop from unformed boy to courageous young man. The story addresses the question of what makes a true hero. You'll love the off-beat characters, the humor, the high adventure, and emphasis on the values of courage, selflessness, loyalty, love and friendship. As the band fights against evil there is violence and tragedy, so this series is recommended for older elementary readers/listeners and up. The first book, The Book of Three, spends much of its pages introducing the readers to the main characters. You may, therefore, want to start with the second book, The Black Cauldron, which has a more exciting plot. You can back-track to the first book after your interest has been captured.
Suggested listening level: 4th grade and up
Written with gentle humor, this series is a heart-warming depiction of a loving, poor, immigrant Jewish family in New York's Upper East Side. This family has few material possessions, but they find joy in each other and in life's simple pleasures. The series also has a lot of interesting religious background about Judaism.
Suggested listening level: K and up
As Christians we celebrate an "upside down" kingdom. From beginning to end, the story of Jesus' life turns the values of power and prestige on their head. What kind of events do we celebrate at Christmas? A king born in a feeding trough? ... to traveling peasants? Itinerant farm hands the first to know? It all happened off of history's radar screen, among the unnoticeables of the street corners of rural back-water villages.
Jesus' life is inextricably tied to "the least of these". To notice and care about Jesus is to notice and care about people who are poor, handicapped, socially unfit, disenfranchised.
These two classic Christmas stories make the connection between celebrating Jesus' birth and stopping to see socially dismissed people with Jesus' eyes.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson:
The Herdman kids steal, bite, hit, swear, set fire to things. They have never been in church before: they haven't been interested and they haven't been invited. But when they get involved with the annual Sunday School Christmas pageant, they transform it and it transforms them. (Funny, too)
Suggested listening level: K and up
A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote:
Tenderly and movingly told, this short story gives us the privilege of seeing what others (the "Those Who Know Best" of the story) miss: the beauty of the friendship between a young boy and his outsider aunt - as they make their preparations for Christmas. The complete text of the story is available online.
The complete text of A Christmas Memory.
Suggested listening level: 3rd grade and up