How to Choose Good Books for Children

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INSIDE: What is Learning Through Literature?

We are made for stories. Storytelling flows through every known culture, past and present, like a lifeline. It’s a foundational way of imparting values and traditions. It’s how human beings connect deeply to the abstract.

What is Learning Through Literature?

Stories are an essential ingredient for humanity.

We need them, we love a great one, and we learn best through them. So why wouldn’t we harness the power of that for our children? When they are allowed to connect with knowledge on an emotional level through story, it becomes a part of them in an infinitely deeper way than any general information from a textbook.

Sarah Clarkson, author of Caught up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children, states it this way:

Stories are the lifeblood of existence. They are the heartbeat that pumps vision into a child’s developing imagination and hope into his or her soul. -Sarah Clarkson

We couldn’t agree more. However, we all know that books aren’t created equal, and wandering around the library (or browsing online) trying to find great books can be overwhelming. At Learning Through Literature, our goal is to gather in one place a curated list of books that will make the most impact and to encourage you to use them in ways that will help kids make powerful connections to knowledge. We strive to do this in a few different ways.

The Book Finder

The first time you access the Book Finder at Learning Through Literature, we recommend you grab a cozy beverage, prop your feet up, and start by general browsing to get an idea of what’s inside.

You’ll find books of all kinds carefully chosen for being well-written and worth your time. Instead of endless options about topics, you’ll find curated lists of what we consider the best of the best. These are books we personally love and recommend. They are books that have impacted us personally and enriched our own lives and our children’s lives. They’re the ones we’re most excited to tell you about. Read more about how we choose books here.

The categories on the side will help you search by topic, genre, age, and more. Although we don’t always recommend filtering by age, it can be helpful for narrowing down options. But don’t discount picture books for older kids or reading aloud to younger ones outside of publishers’ recommended ages.

The lists will continue to grow as we continue adding books and discover new ones, and we love recommendations of books to consider. Tell us a few of your favorites.

You might notice several books in the Finder that don’t tell a story. Some reference books like Nature Anatomy and Animalium are too beautiful and wonderful to leave out.

The Guides

Holding one of these wonderful books in your hands is the first step, but we also want to come alongside as you delve into them with your children.

Our FREE pdf download, How to Create Learning Adventures from Great Stories, gives a simple method to help you navigate your way through a story. Subscribe below and receive this free guide.

In addition, we will soon offer guides in our shop to coordinate with specific books. These are meant to deepen a child’s interaction with a story. Sometimes the best way is to read a book together and forego anything that can become busywork. Other times, you may want something more to encourage kids to dig in with what’s happening in the story. That’s the function of these guides.

FYI, they will work well in multiple learning settings: one-on-one at home or in classrooms and co-ops.

The Blog

We want you to personally join the discussion of how we can enrich children’s lives through the power of story. Maybe you have questions, maybe you have opinions, or maybe you have book recommendations. We welcome the dialogue.

Here are some blog posts to get started:

50 Great Books That Every Home Should Have

How to Choose Good Books for Children

Do Age Recommendations Matter for Children’s Books?