RAR #221: What to Do When your Child Doesn’t Finish Books…and Other Questions You’re Asking

Sarah Mackenzie (00:00):

What do you do if you notice that your child isn't finishing books? How can you get your kids to widen their reading taste outside of a single genre? How can you describe what you do for literature on a high school transcript when you take a more relaxed read aloud revival approach to the subject, and what can you do to help boost your child's emotional intelligence and reading comprehension? We're talking about it all right here and right now at the Read-Aloud Revival.

(00:37):

You've got episode 221 of the Read-Aloud Revival, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. I'm your host, Sarah Mackenzie. Today, I want to jump right into things. We've gotten so many great questions from you listeners. Thank you, thank you for sending them today. I want to answer a handful, so let's begin with a question from Laura.

Laura McKinnon (01:03):

Hi Sarah. My name is Laura McKinnon and I'm from Tallahassee, Florida. I'm a mom of four kids ranging in age from seven years old to eight months old and we just started our third year of homeschool and so far, it's been such a wonderful experience for the entire family. I'm so grateful to this podcast for its encouragement and also for its useful advice. Here's my question. My oldest Elsie is in second grade, and she loves to read. She reads all the time, both independently and her siblings, and she also loves to be read too, which we do daily.

(01:39):

So recently I've noticed when she's reading independently that she almost never reads a book from start to finish. She likes to sift through the pages and begin reading when something catches her eye. Sometimes it's a picture and sometimes it's the title of a chapter that catches her eye and then she'll read for a while and then thumb through the pages again and start reading from a completely different part of the book. She's great at narration but obviously can't narrate what she hasn't read. This drives me crazy, but it doesn't seem to bother her at all. In fact, she prefers it. Is it okay to allow, should I require her to read books as the author intended or step back and let her explore the book in her own way? Thanks so much, Sarah.

Sarah Mackenzie (02:25):

Aha. A child who's reading from rather than through. This is a great question Laura, and you are definitely not alone. We've received some other similar questions from parents wondering why their kids hop around in books and don't read them start to finish. Actually, this reminds me of a question I also wanted to answer from Lakin that's pretty similar.

Lakin (02:47):

Hi Sarah. My name is Lakin and I live in Texas. I have a seven-year-old daughter, and over the past year she's just really, her reading has just taken off and she's a fabulous reader. And this summer, as I've just asked her over the summer to read for pleasure, I've noticed that in her personal reading life, she's kind of skips around a lot. She's not finishing what she starts. She doesn't seem to be interested in books that are easy. She keeps going for books that are difficult. She's seven and she wants to pick up the Lightning Thief, and I don't want to tell her that she can't read these books, but I'll notice that she'll pick up a difficult book and she'll read a few pages or a chapter enough to satisfy the requirement for the day and then the next day she picks up something else.

(03:36):

And so I'm just wondering if this is something I should just let be, if she wants to sample different books, that's great, or if I need to help her somehow, do I help her to find something that interests her or is it her level that she'll maybe enjoy more? I guess I just wonder is this, do I interfere? Do I not interfere? Is it okay to be skipping around like this? So let me know what you think.

Sarah Mackenzie (04:02):

Okay, so the first thing that comes to mind when I hear these questions is a quote from Sir Francis Bacon. This is the quote. "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested." That is some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously and some few to be read holy and with diligence and attention. Okay, so I think I hear you saying here, Laura, is that your daughter is reading books that were intended by the author to be read as a whole, but she's only reading them in snippets out of order, and I absolutely understand why this gives you pause. I also don't think there's really any problem here. One thing that's interesting to know about stories is that while a novel has one big story arc, each chapter is its own mini story arc.

(05:01):

In fact, there are actually very several scenes within a chapter and each little scene in a chapter is probably its own mini, mini story arc. It's almost kind of like this energetic sort of spiral. So you've got in a scene, you've got a full story arc, it's just little, and then that scene might be in a chapter that has maybe two or three scenes and there's a story arc there from beginning of the chapter to the end, and then the whole novel has a one overarching story arc. So there is usually a pretty complete story arc on a smaller level. So while your child does get a big story arc by reading a story, a book, a whole book from start to finish, even if she only reads a chapter in the middle of a book, she's actually still getting the narrative structure because it's all still there. That's really how stories unfold.

(05:53):

Now, I don't really think this is what Sir Francis Bacon was talking about when he said some books are to be tasted and others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested. I think he was sort of talking about literary quality. Some books are really worth pouring over and rereading and rereading and really thinking about curiously, as he says, with diligence and attention. In other books, you can just kind of read for pleasure, like a book that you might read on the beach that you just sort of read and forget, but it was an enjoyable read. And then other books you just read dip from, maybe we can think of non-fiction books in this way, or you might just dip from it and get what you need and not read the whole thing start to finish. However, I think it's worth considering that there are multiple ways to read a book.

(06:33):

We do tend to think of reading, needing to be a start to finish kind of a thing, which is why in a lot of books that don't need to be read that way, the author will say at the beginning, you can pick and choose, dip in and out wherever you like because it's not usually the reader's default. I think that they can do that. So it's just worth thinking about there being multiple ways to approach a book and not just one right way to read a book. Let's think though about an anthology because I think these are more commonly used in schools, but you might have read them in your own reading or literature classes growing up. So in an anthology you've got a collection of smaller bits from longer stories. So there might be one chapter from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or maybe three chapters.

(07:16):

There might be a selection from Anne of Green Gables or whatever. It's not the whole book, it's just a taste of it. What I have found is that oftentimes that taste often drives kids to want to read the rest of the book because you might have an anthology with 10 different kinds of 10 different genres of snippets in there and then realize, "Oh my goodness, this snippet from a science fiction book makes me really want to read the rest of the book. I never usually would pick up science fiction, but maybe that would be something I'd be interested in." So a lot of times that taste of the book often drives kids to want to read the whole thing. That's exactly what happened to Karma Wilson. She's the author of the Bear Snores On series and in episode 215 she told us about encountering The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in an anthology and needing to finish the story and realizing that the rest of the story was not in the anthology in her book, her schoolbook.

(08:10):

So she had to go to the library during math class no less to get a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. All of this to say there's a lot to gain when reading from a book and not just through it. So I think your daughter, even if she's just reading a single chapter from the middle of a book, she'll be getting a lot of the benefits. She'll be getting grammatically correct sophisticated language patterns. She'll be getting exposure to narrative structure in a sort of micro version of it. She'll be seeing character transformation because pretty much the rule of a chapter is that something has to change from the beginning of a chapter to the end of it. So something has to change in the plot or the character transformation. There needs to be a change that something that moves the story forward.

(08:59):

Things can't go on how they used to be. After that, you get through a chapter from the beginning to the end. And also, even if she's dipping in and out of books, she's seeing herself as a reader, someone who takes joy and picking up a book and reading from it. So I don't think I would worry about this too much. I would continue to read aloud to her books from start to finish. Right? She's very young, I think you said. So my guess is by the time she's in. I don't know, seventh, eighth, ninth grade, something like that, she'll have developed a kind of desire for the whole forum and will read more books start to finish. That would be my hunch, but maybe not. Maybe her taste is more attuned to short stories, which by the way is a very short stories are a very sophisticated type of storytelling and there's really nothing a novel can give her that, a short story just sorts of at the beginning of this lifetime of reading.

(09:57):

So I think she sounds like she's off to a great start. I was also just thinking about how at Christmas, even if we're not rereading the whole little house books, I oftentimes will just read the chapter that is set in Christmas to my kids because that is a micro story within a larger story. It can be enjoyed just on its own, which is really what an anthology does, right? It just pulls out these little micro stories that can be enjoyed on their own and then can be enjoyed more fully and more deeply when they're in the context of the rest of their story. Also, as I'm saying this, think a magazine subscription might be of interest to her because those tend to offer these short vignettes or short stories that might just be her readerly taste, which is a great thing to learn and to develop.

(10:44):

But again, I think the idea that she is developing this sense of identity as a reader, that she's dipping in and out of books and that she's enjoying it, I don't think I would worry about that. I don't think I would worry too much, too much about that. And then and same thing basically Lakin, I think you wrote about pretty much the same thing that your daughter who's seven and she wants to pick up big books, and that's because probably this is becoming a part of her identity and she's also realizing she can read harder books and even if she doesn't have the stamina to read a full book start to finish, she's probably seeing the fact that she can read those bigger books as a way to set herself apart from younger siblings as a way to step into her own reading life. So I don't think I'd worry too much about making sure she finishes things.

(11:33):

I think that will come in time even without a lot of pushing or prodding. And then another idea that I have for both of you is there are these books called My Book House, and I don't know if you've heard of these before. They're anthologies. My Book House itself is a series of books. These were published between 1920 and 1971. They're really a collection of poems, stories, biographies that are collected into this leveled kind of books so that every book in this series is leveled to an age. So book three is going to be much simpler to read, say than book seven, okay, because they're going to be like, the stories are going to get more complex and more difficult to read as they go on. So you can just find whichever My Book House book best suits your child's reading level.

(12:21):

And actually, let me just say there are lots of anthologies out there, so you don't need to get stuck on just using My Book House. This is a anthology collection, a lot of homeschoolers love. I have this selection of my house. You may have actually read these as a child yourself. They also can be kind of expensive to find used because homeschoolers love these books, so we're always looking for them. But giving your child a book like My Book House or an anthology like that can be a really good way to meet your young reader, write where she's at if she's not reading books start to finish, but just wants a snippet because that's how My Book House is meant to be read. You open it, you find a story that's a few pages long and you read it. Sometimes it's a full story and sometimes it's a snippet from a longer work. Okay, I hope that helps. I hope that gives you some ideas. Thank you both so much for your question. Let's hear another.

Speaker 4 (13:11):

Hi, Sarah. My question is about my 10-year-old daughter who is a voracious reader. She reads and reads, but she most of the time likes to reread the things that she's read before. So we actually have a house full of incredible books. We are very blessed. This is my fifth child, so my older children have accumulated a lot of wonderful books and I would really love to see her expanding her horizons and reading some new things. I know you have said before that you don't recommend assigning books to children until they get older, so I was just wondering if you had any insight on how to encourage her to read new things while not pressuring her or trying to stop her from rereading, which I know is also a good thing. Thank you so much.

Sarah Mackenzie (14:02):

Aha. This is a question we hear quite a lot around here too. Yes, I absolutely understand your desire to expand your kids' reading horizons and help them to read new things. So first of all, I would love to take a second to just reiterate the superiority of rereading in general. I recorded a whole episode on Why Rereading is the Best Kind of Reading. That's episode 141. If you haven't heard it yet, there are several reasons why rereading is actually a more sophisticated kind of reading than the first time you read a book. And really, I think we'd all be better readers if we just read reread more often than we picked up something new.

(14:48):

So I just want to point out a couple of things quickly. If your daughter is just rereading her favorites over and over, those books have strong potential to become lifelong companions in a way that any other new book just can't. She's building better retention of knowledge and vocabulary because we actually know that this happens, this retention of knowledge and vocabulary, it happens at a better and deeper level with a reread than it does when you read a book for the first time.

(15:18):

She's improving her fluency, she's improving her comprehension way better than she would if she was reading something new. So she's getting a whole different level of literary quality because here's the deal, the first time we read a story, our brain wants the plot. It's just the way we were made. Our brain wants to know what happens next, what happens next, and that's great. But when we reread, we get to ask deeper, more nuanced questions, like more layered questions. We can catch a lot more nuanced. We can read for the power of the language. We can see things we didn't see the first time when our brain really just wanted the answer to that question, what happens next? CS Lewis has this fabulous quote, "I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once." So that's worth considering. Okay, so what would I do in this case?

(16:10):

You say you have a 10-year-old daughter, and you are the best person to decide what's best for her. Of course, you are, right. But I can just kind of tell you if this were my 10-year-old daughter, which I have a 10-year-old daughter, in fact, I probably wouldn't touch her personal reading. I would let her reread as much as her heart desires. In fact, I do this with my 10-year-old who has read the Ramona books, the Ramona Quimby books by Beverly Cleary listens to them on audio principally she has listened to them so many times. She can recite very long passages with all of the inflection and pacing and cadence of the narrator. It's kind of amazing. I would let her reread as much as her heart desires in interpersonal reading time, and then to help her expand her repertoire because I do also want that, right?

(16:58):

I would read aloud books that she hasn't heard before. So if there's like a new book I want to introduce to her, I would default to making that a read aloud. I'm going to read aloud the new book to her. And then in her personal reading time, she can reread and reread and reread to her heart's content. I think it's worth noting that the first time you read a book is the hardest time. It's harder to settle in, especially during those first chapters because you're learning new characters, new names, new places. You're getting acclimated to the world and the setting and what's going on and who wants what and who needs what. And what ends up happening is that you burn more mental calories in those first chapters of a brand-new book than you will for the whole rest of the book.

(17:46):

And this is true for adult readers as well. If you're reading a brand-new to you book set the time period or location with characters that you're unfamiliar with, you're going to work really hard to put all those pieces together in those first chapters. So she might just be a little intimidated by that getting settled in a new world part, and you can sort of remove that obstacle for her by reading the book the first time aloud or listening to it together on audio or letting her listen to it on audio and then rereading. It can be a pleasure for her, and she'll catch so much more of the depth of the language during those rereads. Another idea here, and I would wait until she's about 12 or 13 for this, but you could try to give her something like a bingo card where you put different genres in the different squares.

(18:33):

So for example, make like a little card that has just draw on a piece of paper, nine squares on a card, and then you can put a different genre in each box, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy poetry, a book you've never read before, a book by a new two author, that kind of stuff. Put one of those in each of the squares. And then her assignment over the school year is to read something from each square and she can choose what to read and which order. So you're not assigning the books, you're not assigning the specific titles, but she still needs to fill up the bingo square over this school year or whatever period of time you choose.

(19:12):

This can be a really good way to help a kid read outside of their usual reading fair, outside of their normal genres, expand their reading taste a bit while still letting them develop the skill of choosing books, which is a really important skill for an adult reader. This is a skill we want to help our kids develop. The ability to choose books they will likely enjoy because pretty much every adult reader chooses his or her own reading. So this is a skill we want to help our kids develop. So having a strong reading taste is excellent, and then also helping them read outside of that develop to reading taste is also excellent. So I actually got a similar question from a listener that I wanted to answer. So let's hear that one.

Speaker 5 (19:57):

Sarah, what would you say to an 11-year-old boy who loves to read and spends a lot of time reading on his own but only reads nonfiction, specifically historical books about World War I and World War II? We are in a major rut with that. I do read aloud books to him from fiction, but he never chooses to read fiction books on his own. Is this something that you think I should encourage or require him to do?

Sarah Mackenzie (20:30):

Yeah, in this case, I would basically say the same thing. I wouldn't put any requirements on his personal reading, I would just let him read nonfiction. There is excellent narrative structure and language quality in well-written nonfiction, so I would not worry about that. Now, once your child is about middle school age, I think you can also help him expand his repertoire with something like that bingo card idea, right? Another idea I did this for my son when he was in middle school was, I chose five to seven books I wanted him to read over the course of a school year. Books that I knew he wouldn't choose on his own because they were outside of his normal genres. But I'll say also, they were books that I knew he probably wouldn't choose on his own, but he would likely enjoy. I put these in a basket and his assignment was to just choose one book from the basket each month throughout the school year.

(21:24):

So he was going to read all the books I chose for him, but he got to choose the order in which he read them. And then his assignment was choose a book each month, choose a book from this basket, and then tell me when you're done with it. And then we go out to hamburgers. Hamburgers we're my sons. They still are, he said now 17. And he still loves, they're like his love language. Hamburgers are his love language. And so I would take him out for a hamburger and we would use some open-ended questions and conversations to talk about the book that he just read. And you can do this even if you have not read the book yourself. We have a free guide that might help you here. It's a guide all about simple open-ended questions and conversation starters that you can use to talk with your kids about books, whether you've read them or not.

(22:16):

I'm going to put that in the show notes readaloudrevival.com/221. You can grab that free guide it will help you. But this was a really good way for me to "assigned books" to my son that I knew he would enjoy, or I thought he might enjoy, or I just wanted him to read for the experience of it, but not doing it in a traditional assignee kind of a way. And because I wasn't asking him to write about it, write a paper about it or something afterward, or do like a comprehension question or something, the likelihood that he would enjoy the book and have good memory of it was sealed by the fact that he got a hamburger when we talked about it. It just all worked out really well. Another book I want to recommend to both of you who asked this question is the book by Donalyn Miller called The Book Whisperer.

(23:05):

And this one gives some really useful strategies for helping your kids choose their own reading and then also do it without "assigning books" I mean, I really, really strongly believe that assigning books is one of the least effective ways for us to raise lifelong readers to help them develop the skills of adult readers where they can choose their own books, enjoy reading, talk about books, the way that adults talk about books, engage with books the way that voracious reading adults discuss books.

(23:37):

So in the Book Whisperer, and this book is actually written for teachers, but we read it in RAR Premium as a mama book club. And a lot of our families really figured out great ways to take Donalyn Miller's ideas and implement them in the homeschool. And one of those is kind of like that bingo card where she would have, the students had to read a certain number of books over the course of the school year from a variety of different genres. But again, they got to choose which book. So that can be another good resource for you. We'll put that book in the show notes as well. Okay. Hopefully something in there helps. Let's hear another question.

Speaker 6 (24:17):

Hi. I'm trying to figure out how to write what we have done for literature in our homeschool on a transcript. One of my daughters is thinking that she would like to continue her studies. They were adopted from the Philippines rather late at 12 and 14, and they hated reading because their education had been so neglected. So they came to love reading through read alouds and reading books that related to history related to all different areas. And now they're quite good and I think they have a good handle on it, but I don't know how to write that down for a transcript or what I should write. Any ideas?

Sarah Mackenzie (25:14):

Yes. Okay. This is probably simpler than you're thinking. So for all of my kids, and I've now written three high school transcripts for kids who were 100% homeschooled. I just wrote English 1 for their freshman year, English 2 for their sophomore year, English 3 for their junior year, and English 4 for their senior year. That is all now for my oldest daughter. I actually also wrote out class descriptions to send with her transcript, but then I heard from several other sources that colleges don't really want these, nobody's reading them. So I have not made them again. And so far no other college that we've applied to, that my kids have applied to have asked for them. If you do get asked, "Hey, we want to see a class description, then you could write one." At that point, but I don't think you need to do it to begin with.

(26:06):

And how do you write a class description? Really what they want to know is that your student did what a typical high schooler in your state would do for literature. So you could write something like English 1. This course develops reading and writing skills through exploration of literature and development of written composition on a variety of topics. Okay, I'm not really saying anything with that statement, right? That's true for most. What I like to think of as you speak, which is just sort of the fancy clothes we put on words to make things sound official. In this case, in that description, that's a totally valid English 1 class description. I'm not listing anything my students read or anything that sounds particularly specific, but even so that description's probably more than what you need. Like I said, for my second and third high school graduates, I just wrote English 1 on their transcript.

(27:06):

What you do in your homeschool for English 1 is your decision. So you get to decide what counts for English 1. I always like to recommend Heather Woody's course. It's called Homeschooling for College by Design. It's an online course that's really excellent, and it includes a transcript builder that I felt like really showed me how simple this can be. So I'm going to link to that course again. It's called Homeschooling for College by Design. I'll link to it in the show notes, but try not to overthink this. In my homeschool for high school, we read independently lot lots of free choice reading where they just chose what they wanted to read. We read some books aloud together or listened to audio books of classics together.

(27:55):

And I'm trying to think if we did much writing. Sometimes we did a lot of our writing in high school ended up being centered around their history studies because we go to a co-op where they take a history class. So I saved their writing mostly for that. And that's English 1, so English 2, English 3, English 4. So you get to decide what happens within it. So you don't need to worry too much about how does it, you make it count. You make it count by counting it. That's how it works in homeschooling. Okay, here's another question.

Emily (28:23):

Hi Sarah. My name is Emily. I am homeschooling my five children. Our oldest is nine and our youngest is nine months old. And I really enjoy your podcast, so thank you for all your work you do there. It's been very encouraging. My question is about our nine-year-old. He loves books. He's an excellent reader. He always has been. But we recently realized that he has high functioning autism, and as part of this, he struggles with comprehension of what he's reading. He does great with nonfiction, but with fiction, I will ask him what is the character thinking or feeling, or why did they do that? And he just has no idea. And I know this is very common with autism. So my question is if you or anyone on your team has experience with autism, and if you have any tips to improve his comprehension as we are reading aloud together, thank you.

Sarah Mackenzie (29:32):

Yeah, Emily, thanks for your question. So first, I don't have experience with autism, so take everything I say here with a hunk of salt. But based on my limited understanding of autism, this really makes sense to me because asking him what a character is thinking or feeling, what their motivation for an action is, that just might be a social and relational skill. He doesn't have these skills to tackle yet. My first hunch is to say stick with picture books for a while. I think you said he's nine, and I think you could stick with picture books for a good long while, and especially sticking with them in conversation when you're discussing what a character might be thinking or feeling. The picture books by Jessixa Bagley come to mind here. I'm thinking of Boats for Papa, Daisy Laundry Day. That's a funny one. Jessixa puts a lot of emotion into her illustrations, and that feels like another way he can step into the character's shoes.

(30:39):

It's another way in. So not only are you getting it with language, but you're also getting it with illustrations. And then it's also more concise and more condensed, which might just feel less intimidating. There's less like hidden. It's just sort of, I don't know, concise. I really think illustrations might be the thing that helps you here. And even as I'm saying this, I'm thinking of books by Mo Willems like Elephant and Piggie, which I know they seem very, very simple, but they actually show a lot of human emotional and social cues in the illustrations themselves. In fact, you could just look at the illustrations and talk about what it looks like Piggie is feeling or thinking, what do you think? How is he feeling in this picture? And just with a couple of lines, Mo Willems can show us angry Piggie, sad Piggie, excited Piggie, right?

(31:35):

Same with Elephant. It's kind of amazing what he can do with a few lines. Actually, the other thing that strikes me, especially because you said he's nine, is that I think you can stick with what happened, kind of conversation thread. So instead of digging into a character's feelings and motivations, which just feels developmentally maybe more sophisticated than he's ready to get to, sticking with it, tell me what you remember from this book. Tell me something you remember from this book. Tell me something that happened in this book that's a strong question it's open-ended enough that there are more than one way to answer, right? There's multiple ways to answer, but it's not really as esoteric or nebulous as why do you think he or she did that? Which requires a different kind of social and emotional maturity. So I think just sticking with questions tell me something that happened in this book could be a really good way for him to develop the skill of thinking about what he read and being able to talk about it.

(32:35):

And then as he grows and develops in other areas, he'll be able to tackle that next level of question about why do you think the character did that? Or why do you think the author had the character do that? All those kinds of more mature questions that he probably just developmentally isn't ready for yet. And I think that's probably true for a lot of nine-year-olds. So not just when you're talking on the autism spectrum, but meeting our kids right where they are and making the questions easy and enjoyable to answer. We'll give them the chance to develop their muscles of thinking about what they've read and talking about what they've read. And that slow accumulation of skills about thinking and talking about what they read are developing into really good thinking skills and essay writing skills in the later years. It's like very slow accumulation that feels very natural because that is, it is natural.

(33:25):

It's the way God made us. Okay, thank you to all of you for your questions. If you've got a question that you would like me to tackle on an upcoming episode like this one, just go to readaloudrevival.com/message. That's where you can leave me a voicemail. I love getting them. And speaking of voicemails, I need more kids to send in their book recommendations. So kids, if you have a book recommendation for us for let the kids speak, please call in to tell us about it. Same place. Readaloudrevival.com/message. Tell us your name, what part of the world you live in, and a book that you've enjoyed and something you like about it. You can leave those messages at readaloudrevival.com/message, and we'll play as many as we can in upcoming episodes. Let's hear a few of those messages right now.

(34:18):

Okay. What's your name?

Beckham (34:20):

My name is Beckham.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:23):

And where do you live, Beckham?

Speaker 9 (34:23):

Virginia.

Beckham (34:23):

Virginia.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:27):

And how old are you?

Beckham (34:28):

Three.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:29):

And what's your favorite book?

Beckham (34:31):

Hello Ninja.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:33):

And why do you like Hello Ninja?

Beckham (34:35):

Because there's bad guys and they fight them.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:39):

Very good.

Sutton (34:39):

My name is Sutton.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:42):

And how old are you?

Sutton (34:44):

Eight.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:44):

And what's your favorite book?

Sutton (34:47):

The Last Firehawk because it's fun and full of adventures.

Gentry (34:54):

Hello, my name is Gentry. I'm 10 years old. I'm from Virginia. My favorite book is The Wingfeather Saga. I like it because it's full of adventures and exciting.

Bridget (35:08):

My name is Bridget Marie Sullivan. I love Ramona Q. She is funny. I live in Illinois.

Patrick (35:18):

Hi, my name is Patrick. I'm 13 years old. I live in Kentucky. There's this book about Disney Planes. It talks you about all the planes and my favorite part when Dusty becomes a fire pony.

Gianna (35:34):

Hi, my name is Gianna. I live in Arizona, USA. My favorite book is the Little House series because she moves to lots of places and sees lots of wildlife and Indians, bears, panthers and wolves, and huge jackrabbits.

Thomas (35:50):

Hi, my name is Thomas. I live in the United States and my favorite book is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because Digory plants an apple.

Sarah Mackenzie (36:07):

Thanks, kids. And thank you to all the mamas who submitted questions for today's show, as well as the team at Yellow House Media for producing this episode of the podcast. Show notes for today's episode are at readaloudrevival.com/221. That's where you'll find all the books that I mentioned and recommended, as well as that free guide for having open-ended conversations with your kids about books. Whether you've read them or not, I'll be back in two weeks. Our team has been working very hard on a brand-new and dare I say, fabulous book list. We cannot wait to share it with you. Tune in to the next episode for that. You're not going to want to miss it. In the meantime, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.

(37:01):

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.

(37:39):

This podcast has been downloaded over eight million times. And 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 in connection. We know that raising our kids is the most important work of our lives. 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.

(38:29):

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.