You’ve heard me say this before: I grew up in a home filled with books and magazines, music and musical instruments. I have known from my youth that exposure to this made a huge difference in my intellectual life. (That I cared about having an intellectual life at all I owe to my parents too.) As the author of this article (“Our [Bare] Shelves, Our Selves”) from the New York Times did, I sat on the living room floor with my mother’s books and my father’s Thelonius Monk record albums—art I would not have encountered any other way.
I can’t imagine another life. But the way we live is changing. We carry our books and records around on our phones (sort of). It’s something to think about. There’s more to this article. Read on.
After G.N.P., the quantity of books in one’s home was the most important predictor of reading performance. … Libraries matter even more than money; in the United States, with the size of libraries being equal, students coming from the top 10 percent of wealthiest families performed at just one extra grade level over students from the poorest 10 percent.
The implications are clear: Owning books in the home is one of the best things you can do for your children academically. It helps, of course, if parents are reading to their children and reading themselves, not simply buying books by the yard as décor. …
Will parents go out of their way to grant access to their latest book to their 9-year-old? True, the 9-year-old is unlikely to pick up a physical copy of “Between the World and Me” on his or her own, either, but at least the child sees that tome on a shelf and incorporates it into an understanding of what a life of the mind entails. As an unshared e-book, it is never glimpsed, let alone handled and, possibly, someday read.
It’s an interesting article—something to make you think before you declutter. Check it out.
Tweet: “To a child, a parent’s dog-eared book is a sign of a mind at work.” Yes.
Tweet: Exposure to books & music made a huge difference in my intellectual life.
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Weeding out books was the toughest part of our recent move! And the first thing we had to do in this house was get bookshelves built. Everywhere. A friend just told me that for each of his 4 kids’ 14h birthdays, they were asked to choose five adults they’d like to invite to celebrate. Those adults were asked to select a book to give to the child and to tell a story about why that book was selected. GENIUS idea! And memorable for the kid and for all adults in attendance, I’m sure.
I read those lines about weeding your books out and alternately wished I were there to snag some and felt guilt over my own shelves. 🙂
Brilliant idea to have adults pass on a book to a young adult. I never miss an opportunity to do that, whether I’m asked to or not. 😉