Becoming familiar with authors of the books your children read

When we read a book, we don't only read the BOOK, but we encourage the children to read the "about the author," "acknowledgements," etc. It's just a form of respect for the person who gave us the book. Oftentimes, we'll find out many interesting facts about the authors. Many times we'll even learn that they're believers.

Before we hand books over to the children, though, I research about the authors myself. When I'm sure that the author would have appropriate material, then I share the information with Chris (who reads aloud to them) and the children. (Or, if it's something they're going to read by themselves, I usually have Sarah read the books first. She's a great filter because she has very strict standards about the material in the books she reads.)

Anyway, researching the author is a great way to learn the CONTEXT of what you're reading. When you know a little bit about the author and the time period the book was written, it truly helps you understand the book better. The other advantage to this is that if the author seems not appropriate, I'll tell Chris not to read the book out loud or, obviously, not pass it along to the children to read themselves.

Frequently, we'll try new books or authors because we're familiar with their name or we've heard about the books, but it's still so very important to monitor the materials. For example, I found a book at a used sale by the author "Dola De Jong." Many of you are familiar with Meindert DeJong, the author of wonderful books like "The Wheel on the School" and "Along Came a Dog." Because their names were so familiar, we figured perhaps she was his daughter. Also, he died in 1991 and she died in 2003. We thought she COULD be his daughter, but when we read his biography, it mentioned no daughter. After much research, she apparently isn't related to him at all. Also, during this research, I discovered that that Dola De Jong was a feminist and her books were considered very racy, with stories of les***ns and love affairs. You get the idea. Of course Meindert DeJong was a fabulous author of beautifully-written stories for children with nothing inappropriate. (I also found out that her name has a space and his doesn't...) Anyway, I will obviously be getting rid of our Dola De Jong books, but I'm just so thankful that we research our authors before we read books to our children.

I know homeschool parents who read every single book before their children are allowed to read the books. I think this is a fabulous and honorable idea, but I just do not have time to do this. My children read about four hours per day and there is no way I could keep up with their voracious reading habits. This is the compromise we've come up with. I don't need to read every single piece of material if I know about the authors they are reading. It works for us and thus far we've had very few bad books filter through. If they do, then Sarah catches them or Chris will catch it as he reads aloud and we get rid of the book.

If any of you are interested in monitoring the books through the authors, I recommend that you read the "about the author" on the book (which can tell you a LOT), the acknowledgements (do they mention God, a publishing goddess, girlfriend/boyfriend, spouse, children etc.??), look up an obituary on the Internet (gives you lots of good information about when they lived, what else they did in their life, etc.), read a review of that particular book online, find a biography about the author (I do this a lot and I can tell you it's a lot faster than reading all their books), Google the author's name, etc. There are many ways you can find information about the authors of the books your children read. I just think it's important that parents take this step. We learned long ago that people's recommendations aren't always appropriate for us. (This is why, when I recommend books, I always try to mention things that I even think parents might find objectionable, such as a bad word here and there or the mention of magic.)

After my experience with DeJong, it was placed upon my heart to share our habit. I hope some of you who don't do it already will take the time to do this. Not only is it a wonderful habit to filter out much of the bad material, but it's a great way to learn about the authors you read and help your child discover how much more enjoyable a book is when you understand the context in which the book was written and also more about the person behind the words.

Enjoy your reading!
Sonya Haskins, author of Homeschooling for the Rest of Us