Best of RAR: No More Bookish Overwhelm

Sarah Mackenzie (00:00):

Well, hello hello there. Sarah McKenzie here, and you’ve got another best of episode here on the Read-Aloud Revival podcast, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. I’m doing another best of episode because this is one that feels very pertinent, very relevant, shall we say to this time of year. I don’t know if you’re big on setting goals, new Year’s resolutions, that kind of thing, but I get a little stressed and overwhelmed when I’m thinking about all the ways I want to improve my life. Anyone relate? One of the things that we hear a lot at Read-Aloud Revival is some version of “There are so many books and there’s so little time.” And we have sort of this feeling of overwhelm in our reading lives, especially as it comes and relates, I should say, to reading aloud with our kids. We want to make sure we read aloud all these wonderful books and there just never feels like enough time. How can I fit more time in? How can I make this work?

(00:56):

Anyway, this is a episode from quite a while ago that I thought would be good to revisit because April called in with a question asking this exact question, “So many books, so little time. How do we fit it in? We were already reading aloud a lot. How do we read a aloud more?” So I kind of break it down into a few mini questions and we’re really talking about how to quell overwhelm in our reading lives. This is going to be relevant to you reading aloud to your kids and also to your own reading life. I’ll be back in two weeks with another brand new episode you haven’t heard before, but I wanted to make sure we gave this one a little bit of time in the sun, especially if you are thinking toward goals and toward the new year and you’re starting to feel a little bit of that overwhelm wiggle its way into your brain. I thought this might be a helpful episode to replay, so please enjoy this Ask Sarah episode. A best of the Read-Aloud Revival.

April (01:55):

Hi Sarah.

Holly (01:55):

Hi Sarah. My name is Holly.

April (01:57):

Hi Sarah. My name is April. I’m in Melbourne, Australia. I have a question about-

Julianne (02:03):

My name’s Julianne and we live in India. I am wondering-

Crystal (02:07):

Hi Sarah, this is Crystal from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Can you give me a suggestion for an especially fabulous book?

Sarah Mackenzie (02:17):

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

April (02:25):

Hi Sarah. My name is April. I’m a homeschooling mom of two boys, ages 10 and five. We read all the time. We have audio books 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. 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.

(03:16):

It just seems like there’s 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 (03:44):

April, 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.

(04:15):

That’s the second part I think to your question, and then there’s 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. 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.”

(05:10):

Go listen to episode 141, Why Rereading is Possibly the Best Reading, 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 it’s of anything I have to do every day. It reminds me, I always remember taking my kids to the dentist and my son who’s 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?”

(06:04):

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.” 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. My heart rate slows a bit. I can probably do that. That’s only about 35 minutes a week, like 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. So I’m not saying you should only read for 10 minutes.

(06:57):

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 were 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, we’re letting some kind of obstacle very often a lack of time keep us from starting. So I’m just trying to throw some light 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. 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.

(07:58):

They would get a lot fewer stories because time always feels like it’s in short supply. 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, 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. It’s 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.

(08:34):

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 grow 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 cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”So when I say 10 minutes every other day, I’m not saying that’s it, you don’t need to do anymore. Or 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.

(09:45):

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’ve 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. 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.

(10:51):

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 really read and enjoy and leisurely take time to read and enjoy one book by Mark Twain like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, for example than 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? 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, the ones I’m talking about, I break out into theoretical hives.

(11:54):

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.” 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 like, 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? 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.

(12:41):

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. I’m reminded actually of something I read in Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks.

(13:26):

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 to go to the show notes, readaloudrevival.com/195 if you want to read, I’m Not an Airplane. 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.”

(14:24):

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.” So I’m not saying that you’re necessarily in a hurry as you read April 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. 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 there will always be more books when we get there.” If I read all of Jane Austen, now I’m going to add the Bronte’s. Now I’m going to be like, “Well, now I want…” Right?

(15:25):

The goalposts are constantly shifting and that’s fine, that’s good, but all the good happens from the reading and not from having finished the books. We’re just never going to be able to say, “I have read all the books I wanted to.” 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. 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. So instead of the question of how do I fit all of these important books into my reading life?

(16:24):

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? All you read to your kids April was the Chronicles of Narnia let’s just say, 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. 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…

(17:19):

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. 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 finished. 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.

(18:13):

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 think about the issue. 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. And 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 and 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.

(19:01):

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. I tend to prefer historical fiction above everything else. That’s just my own reading bent. 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 their independent readers. But if you are wanting to have a more balanced, if you’d like to be a little more systematic about balancing the reading, you might enjoy Donalyn 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.

(19:54):

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. 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 homeschool. Check out the Book Whisperer by Donalyn 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.

(20:39):

I’m trying to think off the top of my head. I think last year I read one fantasy book out loud or something like that. 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. From seeing the world, from 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.

(21:33):

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. The last part of your question was about how to prioritize more time for reading when you are already reading a lot. I’m totally sure you need to do that because I think once we give up the ideal of reading “all the best books” or getting through this list of books or whatever. And we acknowledge that we’ll never be able to read all the books that we want to, so 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. If you wanted to make more time, more audio books 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 April, like you’re doing an amazing job and I think just rest knowing that it’s incremental, this reading thing, right?

(22:35):

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. Thank you so much for your question. I hope that this answers it to some kind of satisfying degree. Now let’s hear from the kids about the books they’ve been loving lately.

Sarah (23:13):

My name is Sarah. I’m 10 years old and I live in Texas. My favorite book series is The Critter Club because they rescue animals.

Hannah (23:22):

Hi, my name is Hannah. I live in Texas and I’m 10 years old. My favorite book is Nightingale because it has so many adventures.

Abigail (23:31):

Hi, my name is Abigail and I’m eight years old and live in Texas. My favorite books series is The Babysitter’s Cookbook because they show what true friends are.

Teddy (23:43):

Hi, my name is Teddy and I live in Detroit, Michigan, and my favorite book is Narnia. It’s so epic.

Harrison (23:53):

Hello, my name is Harrison and I live in Detroit, Michigan and I’m nine years old and my favorite book is Orcas Everywhere because it shows you all the types of orcas.

Abraham (24:07):

Hi, my name is Abraham. My favorite book is Mouse and the Motorcycle, and I’m five and I live in Van Buren Michigan, and I love that he has a motorcycle. Goodbye.

Dan (24:29):

Hi, Mrs. Mackenzie. I’m Dan and I live in Dublin, Island. I’m nine years old and I love the book Heidi by Johanna Spyri. It is a fun and happy book, and Heidi only points out the positive.

Sarah Mackenzie (24:44):

All right, I hope that episode was helpful to you. Thank you kids for all of your messages. Like I said, at the top of this episode, I’ll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode of the Read-Aloud Revival. I can’t wait. I wish you a very happy New Year and I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.