In this post, Jennifer Courtney explores the power and the joy of reading together as a family, examines the legacy offered by a home library, and shares how she created lasting memories with her family using the Copper Lodge Library series of books.
A Secret Garden: Cultivating a Love of Reading
Picture a twelve-year-old girl. She has made a reading fort in the closet under the stairs. She is wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, lying on a soft cushion, and snuggled up to her beloved puppy. Suddenly, she kicks open the door of the closet to shout, “Mary Lennox is a brat!”
I laugh along with her because Mary Lennox is a brat, and that’s the point of the opening to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. Not too many authors are brave enough to start their books with such a disagreeable character.
Yet, over time, readers realize that this child has had a hard life. She needs tender loving care and a reformation, and therein lies the beauty of this book.
After we get a glimpse into Mary’s struggles and the struggles of her chronically ill cousin Colin, we are soon ushered into a secret garden that the children find and repair. Picture them finding the key and opening the door to glimpse a wild and neglected garden that was once a beautiful sanctuary. This discovery is analogous to ushering our children into the magic of reading. Picture each book that you read aloud to them or hand them to read on their own as a key that ushers them into a magical sanctuary.
Sharing Stories Together
Because we had read aloud together for many years before that, we had cultivated the habit of sharing our reactions to characters and discussing stories together.
In my own childhood, I had been equally fascinated by the bratty Mary Lennox, the sickly Colin Craven, and the cheerful Dickon. I, too, had held my breath as they fitted the key to the gate lock and found the magic garden. The one way in which my experience was different was that, over the years, reading had become a solitary activity for me.
Early on, my friends would act out scenes from my favorite books during neighborhood play times or at school recess, but, by age eight, they had ceased to be interested either in reading or in playacting. So, my voracious reading was a habit I kept to myself.
I determined to do things differently in my own family.
As I homeschooled, I determined that there would be many times of sharing stories together.
Reading Together Everywhere
There are delights that must be shouted out and sorrows that must be lamented in company. I started the habit of reading aloud to my children at birth. As they grew, I worked to extend that time a little bit longer each day.
Sometimes, this looked vastly different from what I expected. I might be reading aloud on the driveway while my son rode a scooter around me in tight circles. I might be reading aloud with one hand while passing out cheerios. I might have to stop reading a few times in one session to redirect the toddler or clean up a spill or break up a quarrel.
Whatever the circumstances, we persevered. Some years, we read aloud in the afternoons while the baby was napping. Some years, we kept a basket of special toys to occupy the little ones. Some years, we read aloud at the table while the toddler was eating. Some years, we just had to have the patience to be interrupted a lot.
Whatever the circumstances, we plugged away.
So, as my children grew older and began to read independently, I continued to share in their experiences. Sometimes, they would burst forth out of a closet with something that must be shared immediately. Other times, they had to be coaxed to share over the dinner table or an afternoon snack.
Copper Lodge Library: A Bridge from Reading Aloud to Independent Reading
The Copper Lodge Library spans both of these stages.
When my daughter was younger, I read aloud to her from Ancient World Echoes, Old World Echoes, and New World Echoes. In fact, she served as my research assistant as I collected the stories in these books. For every one story that made it into the books, I read five to eight aloud to her, testing them.
Trust me, she did not pull any punches when sharing her opinions.
Reading two of these stories and one poem a week gave us pleasant memories of stories from around the world and also prepared us to read and discuss the adult literature in the Challenge program.
Along the way, we learned how to avoid vice by seeing the consequences for wicked characters, and we learned how to strengthen virtue by seeing the beauty of the good characters.
Each week, we also enjoyed learning about the natural world through Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, Exploring the Heavens with Uncle Paul, and Exploring the Oceans with Uncle Paul. This piqued her interest in going outside to explore nature on her own, turning over rocks and leaves to find out about the teeming life below.
Finally, we read aloud one story a week from Kings of Rome, Senators of Rome, and Emperors of Rome as a way to explore Roman history as the backdrop for our upcoming studies of Latin. These books also gave us historical examples for avoiding vice and pursuing virtue.
The Path to Independent Reading
As she has grown, she has begun to read more and more books on her own.
The Copper Lodge library series of books gives her beautifully illustrated copies to collect and enjoy. For example, The Scarlet Letter gave her footnotes with definitions of more difficult words, background information on the early colonial period, and connections to her Latin studies. This book was another one that prompted outbursts of emotions. At fourteen, she had abandoned the blanket fort under the stairs for the comfort of the armchairs in front of our gas fireplace. Its cozy warmth has been a necessary and welcome component of both our read aloud and our independent reading times.
With a mug of hot chocolate at hand and the faithful puppy at her feet, she called out to me, “Roger Chillingworth is a creeper.”
At once, I was transported to my first time of reading this novel when I, too, was just fourteen. “He certainly is,” I hollered back. “What do you think of Dimmesdale?”
Next year, I will serve as her Challenge II tutor, and I can’t wait to dive into the newest Copper Lodge Library books with her—English Epic Poetry and Pride and Prejudice. I know she will love the illustrations in Pride and Prejudice, and I cannot wait for her to encounter that first line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Building Your Family Library with Copper Lodge Library
After that look forward, I would like to look back with you.
I have been homeschooling for over two decades. Over those years, I have built a library of reference materials like dictionaries, encyclopedias and atlases; of Bible and Bible story books; of biographies and histories; of books about the natural world and famous scientists; of poetry anthologies; of puzzles, riddles, and math stories; of many, many volumes of fiction.
If we want our children to be readers, we need to surround ourselves with books. So, I’m collecting the Copper Lodge Library books as the seeds for my four children to have their own libraries. This is my gift to bless them as they go out into the world.
You, too, can plant seeds with your children and grow a garden of precious family memories, of children who empathize with others, of examples of vice to avoid and virtue to emulate.
Grab a lovely Copper Lodge book and read aloud. Open the door to your family’s secret garden.
Check out the complete Copper Lodge Library collection in the bookstore.
For further reading, you may also be interested in other reasons why you should read classic literature.
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