The Junior Bookshelf Challenge

This far into summer we generally haven't taken much time to get into books. After school is done in April/May there is an unspoken revolt against reading and being confined to holding still with a book. Soaking up sunshine and fresh air as much as possible takes its place. The first month of summer break I'm ok with this, but the guilt grows week by week, and I find myself barking out orders to "grab a book" when the boys need redirection. I'm afraid they're starting to see "grab a book" as a punishment!

There are a couple books that Aidan has started, that he said he loves (in particular, a vintage "Danny Dunn" book that was gifted to us from family (thank you!), and "St. Pius X: The Farm Boy Who Became Pope"). That boy runs cold, and I have to light a fire under him to keep him at something. Since we homeschool and have to do this all fall and winter, I mostly let it go during the summer.

Now that it's August I have that weird, excited feeling that school is right around the corner. (I know, I'm weird like that...I'm sure this is one of the reasons homeschooling works for us.) I'm hungrily thumbing through books and wondering what adventures of the mind we'll embark on this year. Liam will be doing preschool work, so I get to teach him to form letters, and maybe a few simple words? He can already count to 20. He seems to be a pretty sharp little guy, with a vocabulary rivaling some 1st graders, so we'll see how well he picks things up. His sense of humor may be the main stumbling block we encounter. He's is very much our wise guy.

The past few nights the boys have been picking out books to read before bed, inspired to do so by a whole collection of Little Critter books that Grandma got Liam for his birthday. (I think I may have been too encouraging for Aidan to read bigger books too soon. He devoured the Little Critter books--all of them--within half an hour, and moved on to our collection of Berenstain books.) In their hunt for bedtime books, piles were pulled out of the bookcase, and I noticed many books that I have never read to the boys. It made me very sad...I have not been taking the time to make reading a special time in our home lately. Many of the books I've bought because I loved them as a child. But do we have too many books? So many we can't ever use them all? I have to stop keeping books just because they're books.

Determination to clear the clutter around here the past couple months, and keep only what we really enjoy, has inspired another challenge. I'm calling it The Bookshelf Challenge. Beginning this week, we will read at least a book a day (for little kid books, longer for bigger ones, of course) until we've worked our way through all the bookshelves. (This won't apply to the dictionaries and instruction books...I really won't make time for that! I'll also have to do a new challenge for myself and "Mama's books" later. This will be so much harder.) To retain a spot on our shelves, the book has to meet certain criteria: at least one person has to enjoy reading it and have a desire to reread it in the future, the artwork in the book has to be pleasing enough that it can be kept solely as a picture book, or it has to have sentimental value (ie. a gift to commemorate something).

I'm keeping a running list of the books we read, and our vote, whether they get to stay or not...and why! Thankfully the boys have been very willing to give up things after they watched a Curious George episode about sorting and organizing....(I went into the living room to find a mountain of stuff that was a "garage sale" pile, with more stuff flying out their bedroom door amid yells of "GARAGE SALED!" Yes, they turned it into a verb.)

Stay tuned....

How do you organize your books? What makes a book worthy of being kept?