The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

into our tiny San Francisco rental home. Some books were put away in large moving boxes and stored at his parents’ home for a day when we could gain more space than our little closet that passed for an apartment in the big city.

And then the unexpected happened. Just two weeks into my new job and his graduate schooling, I found out that I was expecting our first baby. Forty weeks later we welcomed that little guy into our mini home, and immediately we began to read; Pat the Bunny, The Z Was Zapped, and Goodnight Moon were regular visitors.

There, too, in that big and lovely city by the bay, I found our local library branch. It was an old stone building with wide steps and an expansive lawn, a luxury in the middle of urban sidewalks and crowded streets. This time my backpack held a little person, sleepy and happy with eyes widening to the wonder that is a library. As my mother’s childhood had been, our son was growing up in a very modest home, where money was not at the ready and Mommy and Daddy were barely making ends meet. But the library! All of this—all of this!—for free.

I had a memory bank full of wonderful children’s literature that I had loved, and it served us well for most of our firstborn’s preschool years. We enjoyed discovering new titles together, too, and in those early years of our homeschool I relied heavily on lists of classic children’s literature. My most replied-upon compilations were the Thousand Good Books list from Classical Homeschooling, Sherry Early’s Picture Book Preschool, and the Sonlight Catalog.

Now, our firstborn is 20 years old and
has already graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in English. He reads, he writes,
he creates, and he discusses books
with me. It’s what we do with regular-
ity in our home, and I always believe
www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com
that if nothing else happens academi-
cally here, at the very least our children
will have been exposed to the world’s
best literature, beginning with the time
when they each hung out in a backpack
with me and ending with the volumes
required of them in high school, chew-
ing and reviewing and discussing on a

Someday I’ll once
again curl my
legs under me,
grandbabies on
my lap, and we will
enter the lives of
wonderful people in
the pages of books
that have traveled
so far along this life’s
journey with us.

barstool at the kitchen counter while I chop veggies or roll out the cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

We still have elementary students and even a preschooler. Nowadays I can reserve anything I want from all over the county and beyond from an app on my iPhone, and it will be waiting for me with my name on it at our modest branch library in our farming community of four thousand residents. We have made dear friends of our librarians, and we’re frequent attendees of Story Time each Thursday morning. We check out stacks of books, even reading and re-reading our beloved Goodnight Moon and yes, Homer Price.

As spring turns into summer, summer into fall, and fall into winter, as the years churn by and our children grow into adults carrying their own backpacks of babies, literature and the public library remain the link that creates so many of our happiest memories and nurtures a fondness for shared narratives.

Someday I’ll once again curl my legs under me, grandbabies on my lap, and we will enter the lives of wonderful people in the pages of books that have traveled so far along this life’s journey with us. I couldn’t think of a better way to educate a child.

Kendra Fletcher is the homeschooling mother of eight, aged 19 down to 4. She has never known what it means to homeschool without the presence of preschoolers and loves to encourage other moms who are beginning their homeschool journeys with little ones underfoot. Kendra reviews for the TOS Homeschool Crew and is the author of a popular E-Book about creating a Circle Time for your homeschool. Her website and blog can be found at www . preschoolersandpeace.com.