Home Is Where The Books Are: Creating Literate Spaces, Choosing Books, & Why It Matters, by Meghan Rose & Ruth Shagoury

The title of this book would suggest that this book is of general interest to making a home that is cozy and supports reading, but it is targeted especially to parents building an environment where books are available, where there are rituals and special spaces for reading, and where letters and words can be encountered everywhere in order to encourage little ones to develop the skill in playing with words and sounds to not only allow them to become literate, but also to give them a lifelong love of reading as well as writing. These are ambitious goals, and they are told from the point of view of a mother of twin toddlers and her mother, who serve as coauthors for this project. The book is full of detailed stories, and lots of detailed recommendations for specific books to help readers out, based on the experience of the author.

In terms of its contents, this book is divided into three sections. The first section sets the stage for the environment that encourages children to become avid readers, a physical environment where words and letters are easily present and where children witness their parents and other relatives reading to them and reading for themselves. Likewise, the book discusses the influence of other media, with the knowledge that we do not know the long-term effects of computing and screen time in general for the development of young minds. The second section looks at specific genres of books for children, including alphabet books (and not only in English), numbers books, books that relate personally to children, fun books, and even meta books that are books about books, probably more for the sake of parents than children. The third and final section looks at traditions, special days related to books and reading, and holidays (some of these are biblical, but most are not).

Despite the fact that this is an excellent and very personal guide to help young children learn how to read, there are some definite shortcomings with the book that readers should recognize. For one, the author is not very upright or moral, and has a clear multicultural political bent with a goal of using early reading to indoctrinate young children in immoral and politically biased worldviews, so some of the recommendations (including some of the banned books) are problematic. The books recommended for Christmas, Halloween, and Easter are likewise full of pagan ways and would be wise to avoid. Additionally, the author expresses a great deal of frustration for the books her kids enjoy and seems to want to steer them more towards her own tastes. This seems particularly unjust and at cross-purposes with her goals at encouraging others to read–after all, if one’s main goal is to want children to read, one has to understand that they will probably not like material with the same sort of seriousness that one would prefer, unless they are really odd children. Sometimes it seems parents are too much in a hurry about creating children in their own image without reflecting on whether that image is a godly one.