Speaker 1 (00:00):

Hi, Sarah.

 

Holly (00:01):

Hi, Sarah. My name is Holly.

 

Aprille (00:03):

Hi, Sarah. My name is Aprille.

 

Speaker 4 (00:04):

I’m in Melbourne, Australia.

 

Speaker 5 (00:07):

I have a question about…

 

Julianne (00:09):

My name’s Julianne, and we live in India.

 

Speaker 7 (00:11):

I am wondering…

 

Crystal (00:12):

Hi, Sarah. This is Crystal, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

 

Speaker 9 (00:15):

Can you give me a suggestion for an especially fabulous book?

 

Sarah Mackenzie (00:23):

Hey there, I’m Sarah Mackenzie. This is the Read-Aloud Revival. And in this short episode, I’m answering one of your questions.

 

Aprille (00:31):

Hi, Sarah. My name is Aprille, I’m a homeschooling mom of two boys, ages 10 and five. We read all the time, we have audiobooks going all the time. And my biggest issue right now is so many books, so little time. We read a lot of historical fiction to go along with our history, we read a lot of readers for my five year old who is an emergent reader.

 

(00:53):

My biggest question is how do you meld the importance of reading and rereading so many great books that you recommend, with the recommendation that it only has to be 10 minutes a day, because our volume is so much higher than that? And I still feel like we are always behind where I want to be as far as working through the books that we have, and the books that we have out from the library, and the books that we have on our shelf. It just seems like there are so many great books and there’s never enough time to get to them all. How do you prioritize what you read to your kids? Are there certain categories that you feel are better than others? For example, we never read fantasy because we’re so busy reading everything else that we have. So how do you prioritize and how do you make more time for reading?

 

Sarah Mackenzie (01:50):

Aprille, thank you for this question. Okay. I actually think there are a few questions tucked into this larger question. What’s with the recommendation to read for 10 minutes and how does that meld with wanting to fill our kids with stories and to reread many of those stories? So that’s, one part of your question. How do we manage the frustration that we’re never getting to as many books as we want to get to? You said so many books and so little time, which I think a lot of us can resonate with. That’s the second part I think to your question. And then there another one tucked in there, which is how can we make more time for reading when we’re already pretty active readers, and how do we prioritize which books to read? So I think all of those questions are well worth considering. So we’re just going to tackle them one by one.

 

(02:39):

Let’s start with the question about the 10-minute recommendation. For anyone new to the podcast, I often give this advice that all you need is 10 minutes a day, most days, not even every day, to read quite a lot with your kids and to fill their hearts and minds with good stories. Also, I’m a huge proponent of rereading books and often say it’s some of the best reading we do. So for the rereading on why we reread, I’m just going to direct anyone who just heard me say rereading is possibly the best reading we do and goes, “Huh, I want to know more about that.” Go listen to episode 141, Why Rereading is Possibly the Best Reading.

 

(03:23):

But let’s talk about this 10 minutes thing, because how does this meld with my recommendation to read and fill our kids’ hearts with stories and their minds with stories, but you only have to do 10 minutes. So at some point, I just did the math, 10 minutes every day. If we were to read aloud for 10 minutes every day, that adds up to 60 hours a year. But I was thinking to myself about how stressed I get when I think of anything I have to do every day. It reminds me, I always remember taking my kids to the dentist and my son who is now 16, was probably I don’t know, six or seven at the time. And I’ve got babies and big kids, big kids are on the dental chairs. And the dentist says, “Do they floss every day?” I think, “I don’t know if they floss every day. I don’t even know if that kid’s wearing clean underwear. I have no idea if he flosses every day. I’m not sure if he knows what floss is.” Right?

 

(04:20):

And so anytime someone says you just need to do this every day, it feels a little bit anxiety producing for me. So I think, “Okay, what if we were to read aloud to our kids every other day. That’s more doable, right?” My heart rate slows a bit, I can probably do that. That’s only about 35 minutes a week, a half an hour a week. And that adds up to 30 hours a year. Well, in 30 hours a year, you could read aloud the entire Chronicles of Narnia, or 150 to 200 picture books. I mean, it’s a lot. It doesn’t feel like much in the moment.

 

(04:59):

So I’m not saying you should only read for 10 minutes. I’m not saying stop after 10 minutes. I’m saying that if it’s all you got to, if 10 minutes every other day is all you are able to manage, you’d still be doing really well. And so often I recommend 10 minutes every other day to those who are not reading aloud right now, usually because a lot of us when we’re not doing something we want to be doing, it’s because we’re letting some kind of obstacle, very often a lack of time, keep us from starting. So with that 10-minute recommendation, I’m trying to throw some light on the fact that even if you only read for 10 minutes every other day, you could still read the entire Chronicles of Narnia, or 150 picture books with your kids. And that is a gift of true riches.

 

(05:51):

Even now, as someone who shares a lot of stories with my kid, if I waited until I had a free half hour or a free hour to read to my kids, I would read aloud a lot less often. They would get a lot fewer stories because time always feels like it’s in short supply, right? I never look at an hour and go, “Gosh, I have nothing to do in this hour. I just don’t know what I want to fill it with.” That’s not a reality for mothers, right? But what usually happens is that if I start reading, if I go, “Okay, I only have 10 minutes or I’m just going to read for 10 minutes,” a lot of times I keep going, that 10 minutes leads to more. The hardest part is just getting started. And we know that when we’re out of a good habit, then starting with a very tiny version of that habit is often the best way to get back into the swing of things.

 

(06:40):

In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear writes this, “All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger, roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”

 

(07:14):

So when I say 10 minutes every other day, I’m not saying, that’s it, you don’t need you do anymore, actually I’m saying that. When I say 10 minutes every other day, I’m not saying stop there. I’m saying set the bar low to start and also if all you have is 10 minutes every other day, that’s enough. That’s 35 minutes in a week, it’s 30 hours in a year and it’s enough. Don’t let lack of time stop you. And don’t let your desire to have a perfect read-aloud life keep you from having a darn good read-aloud life. Right? So that’s, what I mean when I say 10 minutes. I usually read more than that.

 

(07:51):

Now, let’s talk about the second question within this question, which I think is perhaps the most important part of your message to me. You asked about this idea of so many good books, so little time. How do we manage that feeling of frustration that we’re never getting to as many books as we want to get to? I think the way you worded it might have been, “We’re never where I wish we were as we’re working through our list of books.” And I think a lot of us feel this, right? So I want to take a second to remind ourselves that the goal is the reading, not the having read. All of the good things that come from reading, they happen during the reading and during reflecting on what we read, not in finishing the book, not in the completing of the books.

 

(08:41):

So practically speaking, let’s say whether your child has read all of Mark Twain, doesn’t matter nearly as much as if they read and enjoyed and really dove into let’s say one book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. So I would argue that it’s far better for your child’s reading life and for the enlargement of their mind, and their soul, and their spirit to leisurely take time to read and enjoy one book by Mark Twain, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, for example, then to be able to say, “Well, I read all of Mark Twain,” but they never want to pick up another book by Twain, in their life. Right?

 

(09:23):

Working through a book list isn’t as useful or as nourishing of an exercise unless we’ve been given the time and the leisure and the breathing room to really enjoy the reading, to meet the characters and go as slowly or as quickly as our reading selves want to as we’re reading. This is why I like to say I’m allergic to rigorous reading lists. If I see a literature curriculum or a homeschool curriculum or a syllabus of any kind that shows me a long book list, especially a long book list of hard books, you know the ones I’m talking about, I break out into theoretical hives. I really do. There are no gold stars that get put on our reading brains because we finished a certain number of books. Because we can say, “I did it, I read that hard book.”

 

(10:10):

The last thing we want to give our kids after they have read a book, is that they did it and they don’t need to revisit it. Right? So let’s just think, I’m trying to think off the top of my head, of Hamlet, let’s just go with Shakespeare because that’s the first thing that came to mind. So if your child has read Hamlet once in school and you’ve got this kind of mindset of we’re just working through books, we’re just trying to get through all of these really good books, then they’ll read it once and they’ll feel like they’ve read it and they did it, like I did Hamlet, right?

 

(10:38):

But really, they’re probably going to get far more and enjoy it far more if they read it slower, if they reread it, maybe if they read a couple different versions of it. And in fact, whether or not they read all of Shakespeare’s plays or they just read and enjoyed and dove into a few different versions of Hamlet at a leisurely pace, is going to have a huge impact on whether they become adults who want to read Shakespeare, or adults who think Shakespeare is something they had to get through for school. I did hamlet. There will always be more stories that we want to read with our kids than we can. That’s never going to go away for you. So you’re never going to have so much reading time that you think, “We read so much, we have time to get to all the reading we want.” That’s not possible.

 

(11:26):

I’m reminded actually of something I read in Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks. So there’s this chapter I felt very convicted while reading this chapter, about our desire to speed up life and basically this modern human desire to want life to speed up to our pace and our frustration by our own limitations, by the fact that we have limited time and energy, so we can’t actually get to all the things we want to get to. I actually wrote a post sometime ago about the same idea. I called it, I Am Not An Airplane. I’m going to put that post in the show notes so you can read it if you want. So go to the show notes, readaloudrevival.com/195, if you want to read I Am Not An Airplane.

 

(12:10):

Anyway Oliver Burkeman writes this, “There may be no more vivid demonstration of this ratcheting sense of discomfort of wanting to hasten the speed of reality than what’s happened to the experience of reading. Reading takes longer than we’d like. Reading something properly just takes the time it takes.” And then later he goes on to say, “In a world geared for hurry, the capacity to resist the urge to hurry, to allow things to take the time they take, is a way to gain purchase on the world, to do the work that counts, and to derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of deferring all of your fulfillment to the future.”

 

(12:55):

So I’m not saying that you’re necessarily in a hurry as you read, Aprille, or anyone else who’s listening to this, but something Oliver said there that letting things take the time they take is a way to derive satisfaction from the doing itself. So it’s our ability to say I am not going to be more satisfied when I have finished reading all of Jane Austen’s books or when I have finished reading all of the books on this particular list, because we’ll never get to it, there will always be more books when we get there. If I read all of Jane Austen, now I’m going to add the Brontes, now I’m going to be like, “Well, now I want…” Right? The goal posts are constantly shifting and that’s fine. That’s good. But all the good happens from the reading and not having finished the books. We’re just never going to be able to say, “I have read all the books I wanted to.”

 

(13:45):

In fact, I talked to a lot of homeschooling moms all over the country and I have never, ever, ever, not once, ever spoken to a homeschooling mom who said she read every book she was hoping to read with her kids. It’s an impossible task, right? You won’t be able to read every book you want to with your kids. But instead of letting that plunge us into despair, I think we should just take that as an invitation to choose the books that light us up, that our kids enjoy most, that help us form really good connections and memories with them, that expose them to a big, wide, beautiful world, that help them see things from a new perspective, and that give us good belly laughs and shared experiences together. Right? So instead of the question of how do I fit all of these important books into my reading life, how do I fit in time for all the reading, I think a better question to ask might be which books do I want my kids to remember reading with me most?

 

(14:48):

If all you read to your kids, Aprille, was the Chronicles of Narnia, let’s just say, kind of to harken back to what we were talking about earlier with the 10-minute thing. If all you read to your kids was the Chronicle of Narnia, that would be riches indeed. It really would. That would be a tremendous gift to give your kids. They would have a rich storehouse of beautiful stories and characters and memories of you reading to them and sharing the Chronicles of Narnia.

 

(15:15):

So I think we want to shift our focus away from finishing books, working through book lists, getting through a certain number or kind of book, or having a certain focus on the quantity, and shift instead to focusing on the reading itself so that we can gain… This is how I think we sort of shed that frustration of so many books, so little time and we get to gain satisfaction from, I have time to read every day. Whether I have time to read all the books that I want to read before I die, that’s not going to happen, but I do have time to read every day and that is a gift.

 

(15:51):

One way around this, I think, one way to help us put more emphasis on the reading and not the having read is to set times for reading in our day, but don’t worry about how many books you finish. So I track all of my reading in a reading log, but I don’t number them. I couldn’t tell you, for example, how many books I read in 2021. I used to do that, but I purposefully do not number the books anymore because I know that if I number the books, I’m immediately casting more light than I want to on the quantity of books I finished. And that is not a metric I care about near so much as the experiences that I had while reading. So don’t worry about how many books your kids read or how many books you read aloud or how many books your kids reread, you just read every day or every other day, or however often you can and are able to and want to. I think that might be a better way to kind of think about the issue.

 

(16:45):

You also asked, how I choose what to prioritize? Because you said you hardly ever read fantasy because you’re reading history books that go along with your historical studies and early readers. I think this is going to shift over time. However old your kids are, whatever season your life is right now, it’s going to shift in two years from now. Things are going to look different for you. So that’s, going to shift too. I don’t read an equally balanced amount of historical and fantasy and memoir or biography or nonfiction. I don’t read a balanced diet to my kids every year, that shifts just sort of naturally with the seasons, the seasons of the year and also the seasons of life, right? I tend to prefer historical fiction above everything else. That’s just my own reading bend, that’s my favorite genre. So I read aloud less fantasy than other people I know who read aloud. And I read a lot less fantasy than my kids do, my teenagers do, and my kids once they’re independent readers.

 

(17:45):

But if you are wanting to sort of have a more balanced, if you’d like to be a little more systematic about balancing the reading, you might enjoy Donnalyn Miller’s book, it’s called The Book Whisperer. And she has a simple system for having her students, she’s a middle school reading teacher, and she’s got this simple system for having her kids read from a wide variety of genres. She does actually use a goal for a certain number of books read. I think it’s 50, but I could be wrong, that’s just a number I have in my head. So if she has her students read 50 books in a year, a certain number would be historical fiction, and a certain number would be fantasy, and a certain number would be biography or nonfiction or whatever. And that way they’re reading a wider range of books.

 

(18:28):

I don’t do anything that formal in my home, but if that idea appeals to you, and I know it appeals to some of our RAR premium members because I know some of them use something similar in their home schools, check out The Book Whisperer by Donnalyn Miller. Your library probably has it, so you can just check it out and kind of get some ideas there for helping your kids sort of widen their taste or helping you sort of widen your taste as you’re reading aloud. But I also wouldn’t feel compelled to do it.

 

(18:54):

I’m trying to think off the top of my head. I think last year I read one fantasy book out loud. Yeah, or something like that. I mean, it’s just, I think we all have different tastes and that’s fine. Again, you can’t read everything you’re going to want to read. So stop trying. And instead just enjoy the things that you are reading and focus on the goal, which is enriching our children’s lives by sharing stories with them, filling their hearts and souls and minds with stories, helping them grow in empathy and kindness for others by seeing a different point of view, right? From seeing the world from somebody, walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, from bearing witness to heroes overcoming obstacles again and again and again so that they are witnesses to that happening so often that they know they have what they’re going to need to overcome obstacles in their life, and then to form these connections and bonds with one another. If we focus on that instead of the number of books we’re working through, I think we’re just going to enjoy it so much more.

 

(19:55):

The last part of your question was about how to prioritize more time for reading when you’re already reading a lot. I’m not totally sure you need to do that because I think once we give up the idea of reading “all the best books”, getting through this list of books or whatever, and we acknowledge that we’ll never be able to read all the books we want to, we might as well just relish the reading itself and take time to reread our favorites. Then we’re freed of that need to take so much time for reading. You’re probably spending enough time reading.

 

(20:28):

If you wanted to make more time, more audiobooks or sliding in little pockets of 10-minute reading chunks of time in different times of the day, could work. But it sounds to me, Aprille, like you’re doing an amazing job. And I think just rest knowing that it’s incremental this reading thing, right? It never feels like you’re doing a tremendous amount all at once. But over time, it builds up and it creates this rich storehouse in the minds and hearts of ourselves and our kids. And we are better for it and the world is better for it.

 

(21:07):

Thank you so much for your question. I hope that this answers it to some kind of satisfying degree. And let’s hear from the kids and see what they have been enjoying reading lately. Shall we?

 

Vivian (21:26):

Hi, my name is Vivian, I’m seven years old and I live in Utah. And my favorite book right now is Fablehaven by Brandon Mull. And what I like about it is that it has fun mysteries.

 

Vienna (21:39):

My name is Vienna, and I live in Utah. And I am five years old. My favorite book is All for Pie and Pie for All. And my favorite part is at the end they all help make it and they all help eat it and not even a crumb was left.

 

Speaker 13 (21:56):

All right. What’s your name, baby?

 

Speaker 14 (21:58):

My name’s [inaudible 00:21:59].

 

Speaker 13 (22:01):

How old are you?

 

Speaker 14 (22:01):

Three years old.

 

Speaker 13 (22:04):

What’s your favorite book? Say it really loud.

 

Speaker 14 (22:06):

[inaudible 00:22:09].

 

Hiram (22:11):

Hi, my name is Hiram, nine years old, I live in Utah. My favorite book is Dragonwatch by Brandon Mull. The thing I like about it is that it has tons of adventure. What’s your name?

 

Speaker 16 (22:28):

Vincent. And I live in Utah. And I-

 

Hiram (22:30):

What’s your favorite book?

 

Speaker 16 (22:31):

Over in the Meadow.

 

Speaker 17 (22:32):

How old are you?

 

Speaker 16 (22:33):

Three and half.

 

Sarah Mackenzie (22:36):

Thanks for listening. If you’ve got a question for an upcoming episode, leave me a voicemail at ReadAloudRevival.com/message. Until next time go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.

 

(22:57):

So many of us feel overwhelmed in our homeschool. There’s a lot to do, and it feels like every child needs something a little different. The good news is, you are the best person on the planet to help your kids learn and grow and home is the best place to fall in love with books. I’m Sarah Mackenzie, I’m a homeschooling mother of six, the author of Teaching from Rest, and The Read-Aloud Family. And I’m the host here on the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast. This podcast has been downloaded over eight million times. And you know, I think it’s because so many of us want the same things. We want our kids to be readers, to love reading. We want our homes to be warm and happy havens of learning and connection. We know that raising our kids is the most important work of our lives.

 

(24:00):

That’s kind of overwhelming, right? You are not alone. In Read-Aloud Revival Premium, we offer family book clubs, a vibrant community and Circle with Sarah coaching for you, the homeschooling mom. So you can teach from rest, homeschool with confidence and raise kids who love to read. Our family book clubs are a game changer for your kids’ relationship with books. We provide you with a family book club guide and an opportunity for your kids to meet the author or illustrator live on screen. So all you have to do is get the book, read it with your kids and make those meaningful and lasting connections. They work for all ages, from your youngest kids to your teens. Every month our community also gathers online for a Circle with Sarah, to get ideas and encouragement around creating the homeschooling life you crave. They’re the most effective way I know to teach from rest and build a homeschool life you love. We want to help your kids fall in love with books, and we want to help you fall in love with homeschooling. Join us today at RARPremium.com.