I was headed out to the library yesterday when my oldest son said, “Oh yeah. I’ve been wanting to read some books by Chesterton, Dante and Shakespeare. Will you see if you can find me some at the library?”
Uh, I don’t even know where they keep books like that at the library. I told him I would ask a librarian to help me find them. He was happy.
I haven’t pushed him to read the Classics. I haven’t forced him to read anything. He hasn’t had a Literature course, as such. He just knows from other things that he has read that he will gain something from reading works by these great thinkers.
I searched the library catalog while I was there. They didn’t have books by any of those guys at our branch! But I found a book I could reserve called “G. K. Chesterton on Shakespeare”. Ah ha, that should be interesting. To Shawn, at least. I don’t know if I could handle such intense and lofty thinking myself, but I’m confident that he can. I also reserved a book of ten of Shakespeare’s plays.
A few quotes by G. K. Chesterton from here:
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
I have a feeling I’ll be hearing some interesting quotes and ideas as Shawn reads some of Chesterton’s works.
Speaking of which, the Charlotte Mason method works. Shawn has been fed a diet of living books all his life. It’s only natural that he should be hungry for the great thoughts of the great thinkers throughout history. Hence, the title of my post, “I Tell You, It Works!”
And the Holy Spirit can be depended upon to lead them into what they need to know and how they need to study.
This post is included in the Charlotte Mason Carnival here.
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
[…] Penny writes about the power of living literature in I Tell You, It Works. […]
Wow! How wonderful that your son is asking for classic authors! (Wondering why he didn’t go to the library WITH you, though. He must have had something else going on.) The living books are probably my favorite part of a CM education.
Hi Jimmie,
The way our family’s situation has been for the last several years has caused us to only take one or two kids at a time to places since our car could only hold a few. We just got a van that holds everybody in May. I still wouldn’t take everybody to the library. We would overrun the place (it’s pretty small). My older ones usually stay home and babysit the younger ones. They tell me what they want at the library and I go get it for them. I love the living books aspect the most, too!
Chesterton, Dante and Shakespeare…. Happy thought!
I suspect my home has more books by this wonderful trio than my local library. :-/
My 22yo daughter with autism surprises people all the time when she shares her interest in the lives of Julius Caesar and Brutus, written by Shakespeare and Plutarch.
Hi Tammy,
Wow, that’s neat that your daughter is so enthralled with history and great writers! My oldest is the first to really wade into this world of classical literature, and I’m amazed at how much his thinking has expanded. He was already beyond me when he started reading Dante. Just being honest here.