How Fiction Makes Our Brains Better

In posts at this site I encourage the reading of good fiction, and, of course, one of my purposes in providing reviews is to help point people to good fiction.Reading has many benefits, and I was quite interested in this video which was pointed out to me by one of our favorite authors, Douglas Bond.

This is well worth the three minutes to watch:

N. D. Wilson on Darkness and Children's Stories

N. D. Wilson has a really good, brief article in the latest issue of Christianity Today on the place of evil and pain in children's stories. It is well worth reading and will be helpful as you consider books for your children.
Wilson argues that we ought not give children only books where all goes well. Instead they need stories where evil is encountered and dealt with appropriately. He quotes G. K. Chesterton: "If the characters are not wicked, the book is." Wilson's point is well made:

"Childhood is the time for truth, and adulthood is the time for a deeper understanding of the same. To seed courage, we must show fear. To reveal triumph, we must build enemies. To tell the truth about what it means to be heroic, we must spin a fiction full of danger."

Wilson appropriately notes that the issue is dosage. Children don't need to face the full onslaught of human depravity but good stories prepare them for encountering evil and overcoming. I encourage you to read the full article.

Family Bible Reading

Phil Eyster, a missionary, founder and president of Eagle Projects International, has been a dear friend of mine for about two decades and has been a regular encouragement to me in the realm of parenting and discipling my children. He recently posted this encouraging note about finishing their fifth reading of the entire Bible as a family. Phil is honest about the challenge of such a task and how long it takes with a large family across a wide range of ages. He writes:

 With all of my travels, and having guests here (who we just included in with us whether they were Christians or not), and interruptions, and phone calls and Marcia's health, and the addition of the girls who aren't able to make it through 3 or 4 chapters, and my jet lag, and on and on, this is the longest period of time it took for us to do it. We simply can't get it done every day. Some weeks it is only 2 days, most weeks it's like 4 times.

I encourage you to read the full note (it is not very long) and be encouraged to keep on taking the small, faithful steps in discipling your own children. 

UPDATE: Since the original is a Facebook post it was not available to everyone. Phil has given me permission to post the full note here:

"Bible Time" At Our House

Yesterday evening I posted that we had finally finished reading the Bible through as a family after 4 years and 9 months. It was our 5th time through as a family, something we started in 1991 when Sharon and Leonard were very young.

I didn't post that to boast but as an encouragement to other busy families, to say that it CAN be done. Forty years ago there was a man in our church on the Main Line of Philly who had read the bible through every year of his life since his teens, often in different versions. At that time he was in his late 60s and I remember him saying it was over 50 times that he had done it at that point.

With all of my travels, and having guests here (who we just included in with us whether they were Christians or not), and interruptions, and phone calls and Marcia's health, and the addition of the girls who aren't able to make it through 3 or 4 chapters, and my jet lag, and on and on, this is the longest period of time it took for us to do it. We simply can't get it done every day. Some weeks it is only 2 days, most weeks it's like 4 times.

I print off a check list from the internet, and just hang onto that list, in this case for almost 5 years. It used to be only 2 to 3 years but with our new ones it took longer. All my kids have witnessed how hard it is to get "Bible Time" done, and I literally start announcing it mid to early afternoon that we are GOING TO do it tonight no matter what!! And I'll announce it more than once. And even then it takes the determination of a bulldog (imagine our bulldog Gus going after an intruder is a good example) to get it actually done.

I know a few families with multiple children of various ages who have adopted ones and no adopted ones that do this, and it is an unbelievable challenge, far harder than you think it would be (hmmmm wonder why?).

When we finished last night it was the first time for the little ones who are now 11 and 9 to do it. Bethany read the last verse. There was a real sense of accomplishment for them. After all, how many 9 and 11 yr olds have read every word of the Bible? Over the years we have used an enormous amount of methods, tricks, versions, patterns, lengths, and times to get it done. But we did it.

I immediately went and grabbed another check list and tonight????? Guess what....I'll start announcing it this afternoon.....Hopefully this time we can do it in less time. The fact that it is getting the word of God into us is only part of the benefit...concentration, focus, obedience, togetherness, talking, praying, meeting, discussing, dealing with any family issues, are all added advantages.

Most families and books I've read about how to run a large or small family use dinner time as a time to do all of this, and that's great and good. However, with our life, my schedule, Marcia's health, having kids from 23 to 9 around, I confess that if we can eat dinner together 2 or 3 times a week that is a major accomplishment. So pursuing a time of devotions together became the place where we connect. There are no hard and fast rules, and we frequently have to adjust things to make room for attitudes and moods and abilities and sickness and whatever, but this was the place we have found after 29 years of raising children that we chose to plant our flag in the ground and say we WILL get this done.

I hope this is an encouragement to some. It is not intended as a discouragement. And sometimes it looks very different and sometimes when I'm jet lagged I can't even pronounce the words and keep asking where we are reading. My kids have had a good time laughing at my expense, and they should feel free to post below this how spaced out I can be.

God Bless anyone who even makes an attempt to do this. It ain't easy.

George Grant on Reading Aloud

Reading aloud together has been a staple of our family experience, and I only wish we did more of it. I just came across a good article by George Grant on the value of reading aloud to your children. Here is an excerpt:

Adults who wear business attire and behave perfectly appropriately in steel and glass towers day after monotonous day transform themselves into snakes, mean old hags, princesses with snooty accents, and sorrowful baby bears when a small child is snuggled on their lap with a good book. Is it any wonder that a happy child’s evening litany includes “Read one more book, please?”

The whole piece is not very long and well worth reading. Make time for reading with your children.

Teddy Roosevelt on Reading to His Boys

In a letter to one son, Teddy Roosevelt mentions that while his wife is away he is doing the nightly reading to the younger boys. His description of their time together is a good encouragement to us today to read our children.

“Each night I spend about three-quarters of an hour reading to them. I first of all read some book like Algonquin Indian Tales, or the poetry of Scott or Macaulay. Once I read them Jim Bludsoe, which perfectly enthralled them and made Quentin ask me at least a hundred questions …. I have also been reading them each evening from the Bible. It has been the story of Saul, David and Jonathan. They have been so interested that several times I have had to read them more than one chapter. Then each says his prayers and repeats the hymn he is learning …. Each finally got one hymn perfect, whereupon in accordance with previous instructions from mother I presented each of them with a five-cent piece.”

Cited in The Letters and Lessons of Teddy Roosevelt for His Sons, ed. Doug Phillips

Spence, “How to Raise Boys Who Read”

Thomas Spence, President of Spence Publishing Company, has written a very good article for the Wall Street Journal titled, “How to Raise Boys Who Read.” Spence is the father of 6 boys and as the father of 5 boys myself I concur with his arguments.

Spence takes on the trend of “meeting boys where they are” by giving them gross books to read (I was not even aware of how low some of this has gone). He appropriately cites Plate, Aristotle, and C. S. Lewis as exemplars of a long tradition which understood education not merely as the accumulation of facts but as the training of certain kinds of people with the ability to love what is good and hate what is bad. In summarizing this section Spence writes:

One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn't go very far.

Then, if appealing to boys’ interest in gross things is not the way to get them to read, what is the answer? Spence cites studies and then gives this basic, commons sense answer:

The secret to raising boys who read, I submit, is pretty simple—keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.

Amen! It may be difficult but it is our job as parents and it is worthwhile.

Spence closes with this:

Most importantly, a boy raised on great literature is more likely to grow up to think, to speak, and to write like a civilized man. Whom would you prefer to have shaped the boyhood imagination of your daughter's husband—Raymond Bean [author of SweetFarts] or Robert Louis Stevenson?

I encourage you to read the full article.

Benjamin Franklin on Reading History

“The general natural tendency of reading good history must be to fix in the minds of youth deep impressions of the beauty and usefulness of virtue of all kinds, public spirit, fortitude, etc.”

Imagination the Basis of Ethics, Worldview

David Mills' article, "Enchanting Children: Training Up a Child Requires a Well Formed Imagination" (from Touchstone) is a great resource for parents. He deals with several issues, primarily the importance of the imagination in shaping life.  He argues that the imagination shapes life more than the facts we know and that stoires are the key factor shaping our imaginations.  Therefore we ought to be very diligent in guarding what stories our children take in- e.g. limit television and read them good stories.  I agree wholeheartedly!

Here are some quotes.
On the importance of imagination Mills wrote:

We tend to rely, I think, too much on knowledge. Even if Johnny has memorized the Baltimore Catechism or the Westminster Confession, or even hundreds of verses of Scripture, if his imagination has been formed by the wider, secular culture, he will respond to temptations as a secularist, not as a Christian.

He will know that fornication is wrong and that intercourse is a gift reserved for marriage, but he will feel that it is a recreational activity to be enjoyed ... When he brings himself to temptation, his feelings are more likely to move him than his thoughts, and of course once he falls, his thoughts will start to change to fit his feelings.
...
Revulsion is a much better protection from the force of the passions than an intellectual understanding by itself. To feel “This is yucky” is not a final protection from sin, but it is better than thinking “This is wrong” but feeling “This is okay.” Lust offers the paradigmatic case (examples come quickly to mind), but this is true of pride, gluttony, envy, and all the rest, even sloth.

He encoourages avoiding the warped stories which cascade from the television and developing a family culture more oriented to reading.  He admits this will be difficult and will set you apart as odd in comparison with others.

But it is worth the effort. Hearing his father or mother read a good story forces the child to hear and begin to imagine stories he would not necessarily read himself, and it gives you another time to talk with him about the deeper things, without being overtly religious in the way that puts off so many children.

He continues:

Good stories read seriously and with enjoyment will help form a child’s imagination, and give it a shape it will never entirely lose, no matter what the child does when he grows older. But we would be foolish to rely on stories to do more than stories can. Wise Christian parents will immerse themselves and their children ever more deeply in the life of the Church, whose worship and teaching and charity and fellowship will be the most profound creator of the Christian imagination.


There they should meet Jesus. The world in which the child knows that Jesus is present is a world he will always live by, even in reaction and even when he convinces himself that it is an illusion. The well-formed imagination is a gift that keeps on giving.

...
As St. James pointed out, even the devils believe, in the sense that they know what the reality is (James 2:19). But they cannot imagine that the reality is good. They may know of God the Father, but to them such Fatherhood feels like domination and oppression, because their imaginations are so completely corrupted. They do not hear “Thus says the Lord” as “Here is the antidote for the poison that is killing you,” but as “Down, vermin slaves.” Think of Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, who hears Aslan’s kind words only as a threatening growl.

I Can Read God's Word

I Can Read God's Word, Phil A. Smouse
(Barbour Publishing, 2008), pb., 256 pp.
Ages 5-7

This book is a collection of Bible passages and stories nicely paraphrased for young children to read on their own. They stay pretty close to the text itself and encourage phonetic recognition. Each story/passage also has a summary with some application thoughts for parents to read with their children. The theology is not particularly deep, but this is a nice tool for early readers especially with parents guiding interpretation and application.

Tolkien, Read Books Above You

I recently came across a great comment from one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s letters (written in April 1959). Tolkien is advocating reading books with more difficult books to children rather than confining the reading to easier books. Tolkien states:

“A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one’s age-group. It comes from reading books above one.” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, cited in Roverandom, xvi).

Great point!

Reading and Family Bonding

“But anyone who has had children knows that reading (especially reading together) lies at the heart of familial bonding.”
- p. 12 in Seth Lerer, Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008

C. S. Lewis on the Importance of Imagination

Just yesterday I came across this quote from a letter by C. S. Lewis. It captures a truth important to me about reading to children, and the sorts of things they need exposure to. Of course Lewis also argues elsewhere that stories themselves have a keen power in pointing us to Christ. So awakening the imagination is also part of pointing one to Christ.

“Minto reads him the Peter Rabbit books every evening, and it is a lovely sight. She read very slowly and he gazes up into her eyes which look enormous through her spectacles – what a pity she has no grandchildren. Would you believe it, the child has never been read to nor told a story in his life? Not that he is neglected. He has a whole time Nurse (an insufferable semi-lady scientific woman with a diploma from some Tom-fool nursing college), a hundred patent foods, is spoiled, and far too expensively dressed: but his poor imagination has been left without any natural food al all. I often wonder what the present generation of children will grow up like. . . . They have been treated with so much indulgence yet so little affection, with so much science and so little mother-wit. Not a fairy tale nor a nursery rhyme.”

- Quoted in Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, 217). (New York: HaperCollins, 2005), 234-35.

A Thousand Miles Away

I am going through some old books and in one book of poems by a Perry Tanksley I came across this poem entitled “A Thousand Miles Away.” It is a negative counterpart to my “Bedtime with My Boys” and a good reminder of the value of reading to and talking with our children.


My boys would burst into my room
And find me in my chair,
And they would ask advice or tell
One of their exploits rare.
But I would wave them on and say,
Whenever they inquired,
“Perhaps you ought to run along;
Tonight I’m very tired.”
And I’d go right on reading news
As they would beg to stay,
But I ignored them like they were
A thousand miles away.
Ah! Things are different now and I
Would give my all in fact
To have them burst into my room
And see them trooping back.
Ala it’s not to be because
My sons grew strong and tall
And moved a thousand miles away-
So far they seldom call.
And it’s not that I want them here
If they are called elsewhere,
Nor is it that I doubt their love.
I’m sure they really care.
But I can’t help but wonder what
The outcome might have been
If I had laid the paper down
And talked to them back then.
Of course, I can’t take these things back
But for my sons I pray
That they’ll each take time with their boys
Before they move away.

Virile Literature

Old books are fun. You never know what gem you might find in what appears to be the most unlikely candidate. So it is always worthwhile taking a look. For example, I recently found a 1917 volume titled, Public School Methods, vol. 4. The title did not sound very promising, but I discovered that the volume is fascinating. About half of the book is taken up with a discussion of the value and importance of reading. It is very interesting to see how vastly different ideas were 90 years ago.
One section was titled “Virile Literature,” and I thought it was excellent. Here is the bulk of it:

“There is a tendency among boys and some grown people to look upon literature, especially upon poetry, as sentimental, and upon a love for it as effeminate. There is no possibility of such a feeling in the mind of a person who has been properly trained. … There is plenty of manliness in literature and abundant examples for reading which will require all the force of a trained intellect to comprehend. We must do nothing to destroy the virility of reading, but must make it not only the instrument of study but also a means of culture. The wise teacher sees that her classes have a great variety of matter and often leads them into selections that stir the young blood of the manliest boys among her pupils. While there may be fine phrases and elegant structure in such pieces, she encourages the reader to feel the glow of heroism or to warm their souls in the fire of patriotism.”

Indeed. Well put! That is what we aspire to.

Patrick Henry on the Value of Reading

Patrick Henry one of the truly great men involved in the founding of the US and arguably the greatest orator of his day gave this encouragement regarding reading:

“Cultivate your mind by the perusal of those books which instruct while they amuse. History, geography, poetry, moral essays, biography, travels, sermons, and other well-written religious productions will not fail to enlarge your understanding, to render you a more agreeable companion, and to exalt your virtue.”

Both the source and the content of this exhortation commend it to us and to our children.

Quoted in Give Me Liberty: The Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry, by David Vaughan, p. 140.