Just because I haven't experienced them and just because I may not notice them in my day to day life doesn't mean that they don't happen to other people. I think so often we view everything through our own prism and our own lens, and if something has never affected us, we think it mustn't really affect others as well. And I think just the understanding through living books we get of other people's lives and other people's journeys.

Welcome, everybody, to today's show. I am so excited about today's topic. I have a special guest here today, Anthony Coalfield. Our topic today is gonna be all about living books. A long, long time ago, when I dreamt of having a podcast, one of the topics was we gotta do a deep dive on what a living book is because it's so popular in the classical and Charlotte Mason circles.

But you know what? Living books aren't just for a certain type of homeschooler. They can enrich all of our lives and that is what today's episode is going to be on. We have Anthony here today. He is a homeschooling father of 3 coming to us right now from Australia.

It's the afternoon for me and the morning for him right now. Anthony, along with his wife, have embraced living books to inspire creativity and critical thinking in their own kids' education. What started as a personal journey to nurture their kids' curiosity has grown into a business of reprinting these resources for other parents. He's excited to share today the insights that he has learned on how living books can enrich any educational approach. I want to start out, of course, welcoming you to the show today, and I want to hear a little bit about yourself and how you first became interested in living books.

Thank you so much for having me, Kristy. It's lovely to come and talk about something that I'm really passionate about. We're lucky in that we knew we wanted to start homeschooling our boys well before they were beginning to homeschool. So I had a couple of years to do some research into different homeschooling styles and what it would take because we didn't know any homeschoolers at all ourselves. As I did all those online quizzes of what type of homeschooler are you, it kept coming up with this thing called Charlotte Mason followed by unschooling and that and the rest.

And so I did a bit more reading into Charlotte Mason and discovered living books, and it just resonated so much with me because I always loved literature. I always loved books. I was always keeping one in my pocket so that I could just pull it out and and have a read at any time. And then I had a head injury in high school and I found that I got memory issues from that, but I was really able to remember things in the story if it resonated with me emotionally. The the main things that was able to stick in my brain was usually things that were wrapped up in literature and feeling because it just managed to seep that way through those filters in my mind.

And I thought, well, if me after having memory issues with a head injury can get so much out of a well written book, I think that's probably great for my children. And so I did more research into living books and just became quite confident that this is a really effective way to distribute information that will be easy to remember without relying on rote memorization and all of that frustration. So that's that's sort of, okay, now beginning of delving into living books.

That's absolutely fascinating. You know, they now have a lot of research that supports this as we remember things that we have an emotional connection to for for the better or for the worse. Right? We think of some traumas. We've childhood trauma that we've had in the past but it is true that we remember vividly things that where we have emotional reactions to.

The cool thing about reading a fascinating and amazing story that just envelops you is that we are able to kind of be eyewitnesses without experiencing the traumas ourselves. So case in point and we're gonna go into what is a living book, but I just finished a novel. I listened to it on audio because the ladies listening know I really hate doing my hair and makeup and so I treat myself with what Charlotte Mason would call twaddle while I'm doing my hair and makeup. It's not really twaddle but I just read an amazing book about the women in Vietnam who served in Vietnam and how they that journey of discovering what PTSD is and all of that. Man, the history that I learned by just listening to that book, a completely fictional book, but the author definitely did a lot of research and and to that end even said the author stated that she leaned on a lot of historical documents and eyewitness accounts and things like that to tell this fictional story.

But, wow, what an incredible experience. And I found myself at night wondering what my main character was up to and and thinking about and wow, the details and even cities in Vietnam that I can now rattle off because of that emotional immersion. It just reminded me how important, specifically, teaching history is in terms of a living book approach. But first, we need to backtrack because, you know, I get so excited about living books. I will go off on bunny trails this whole episode.

So, Anthony, you there might be a point where you need to take over here. Would you please define for all of us listeners what is a living book? As a homeschool mom who values a family together approach and leans towards the classical and Charlotte Mason styles, I often struggle to bring my educational vision to life with my kids' diverse ages and learning needs. With all our interests and super packed schedule, bridging that gap between the dreamy homeschool I want and reality, I gotta be honest. It's a challenge.

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Yeah. So for me, a living book is an engaging tool that captivates readers through rich narratives and expressive language. And by weaving facts into compelling stories, it brings the subject to life, like, in a way that will resonate emotionally and intellectually as well. It's usually written by a passionate author who's really knowledgeable about what they're talking about so that they can inspire curiosity and foster love of learning and make these complex ideas that we may not have firsthand experience of really accessible and memorable because they make it so relatable.

And then what would be the opposite of a living book then?

So in in the circles, you mentioned it earlier, there's the word twaddle. I like to think of it as a living book is your steak or tofu for your, vegetarian and your veggies and those healthy things that keep your your body going. The living book gives the food for the brain and the nutrition for your brain. Your toddle is your ice cream or your candy floss or whatever you guys call it in the in the US. That, you know, it's it may taste good, but it's not really gonna do anything all that beneficial for you.

So that's sort of how I define the differences. So it's it's nothing wrong with having some twaddle, I don't think. It can be a wonderful tool sometimes even just to relax like you were saying in your in your chair. But you don't wanna have a diet or your mind isn't going to, benefit as much as it could otherwise.

Yes. Well, I read a lot academically because I'm a knowledge worker, as well as I do entertainment because I do social media. But the primary work that I do is knowledge work. And I have found that when I am reading that meaty stuff, I end up not getting my hair and makeup done because I'm out there writing notes. Right?

I have my right now, I'm learning the zettelkasten method. I'm practicing that, and these are my notes right now for those of you watching. And so what I you know, some you're so right. Sometimes, we just popcorn's okay. We don't want to necessarily live on that big gourmet dinner for 3 meals a day.

And so there are and I love your approach. And Anthony and I have had conversations ahead of time. What you're not going to get out of this episode is a snobby Charlotte Mason approach to living books. You're not going to get that here because there's instancesand we can go into this laterwhere your kid is a reluctant reader and not enjoying books, we might need to do some twaddle to get them excited at first with their reading. But I just love that idea and and I'm not the first to say this regarding, like, a gourmet meal 3 times a day.

There's a time and a place but at the same time, and that's why we're having this conversation today, is we do want to, as Charlotte Mason says, give our children a feast of ideas. And that's what we can do with educating our children, which leads us into your own homeschooling experience. And the next question I wanna ask you, from your own homeschooling experience with you and your wife, what are some ways living books have transformed your own homeschooling experience and how you can encourage those of us who maybe aren't really familiar with this way of teaching. Like, how do you possibly teach history without a textbook to step away from that? What benefits do you see with teaching certain subjects with this in mind?

So for me, it comes down to with anything you do in your home school, what is your goal? Like, sure, we often have government checklists that we need to make sure that we hit and and that kind of thing. But we're not homeschooling to hit the checklist that the government gives us or anything else. We're homeschooling to raise confident children who think about things and can be critical thinkers, who can create a life for themselves, suits them. They're not trying to conform to some box that that they weren't made for.

And so for us, we're wanting them to explore different things and think deeply and make connections. And so for me, using a living book is a fantastic tool for that because they can experience history through different things. We're not necessarily so keen on them memorizing the date world war 2 started was this, and the date that Pearl Harbor was bombed was this. Because states without anything to attach them to don't really mean anything. I'd much rather them have a a history book following somebody going through the trenches and experiencing life like that, being conscripted away from their farm and having to see the horrors of war.

And then the my kids can actually have something that they can relate to. They can they can see it through the protagonist's eyes in here. And for me, that is what I want them to get from history. The bigger picture of it, the effects it has on the people, which you can do so much better through a story. It was Rudyard Kipling that said if history was taught in the former stories, it would never be forgotten.

And so for me, as we read some of our living books, it can be quite scary because you've not got the easy, hey, they got know, 19 out of 20 on the test that we gave them later on. So you feel that you're out there, you know, just sort of fumbling around at first. But then my kids start coming up to me and chatting about different things that we've read together. We read, The Children of the New Forest, which is about a a family who's, you know, the aristocracy in the UK. And there's a bit of a civil war going on between 1 group who are wanting to, you know, support the monarchy and another group wanting much more of a parliament and the people leading.

And the the family, being aristocracy are quite supportive of the monarchy because of the benefits that they get. And so as you're reading the book, you're kind of sympathizing with these poor kids whose parents are killed, and they're having to live with the greenskeeper in the forest. But then as we're reading our island story, we're sort of viewing it from a little bit higher but still getting stories, and my kids are like, well, no. The the monarchy spoiling all of the aristocracy is wrong. Like, I'm much more supportive of having people vote and have a parliament.

As they're reading other stories, they're seeing the other side of the issue, and we can have those conversations about what's right or wrong or the gray areas that most of life can be. And it really just helps with that understanding that, my belief is far more important for our children than memorizing the dates or whatever else.

You know, I have a master's degree in history, and so I have taken a lot of classes on historiography and I often joke that after all of that schooling, I basically learned how to make kids hate history. Because not once in graduate school were we ever told that living books could be a way that you teach kids history. In fact, it wasn't until I entered the homeschooling arena and exposed myself to some Charlotte Mason ideas that I realized that this was even a term and my mind was blown. The reason why is because what I loved about history, why I even wanted to pursue a graduate degree in history, was because of all those great stories in my studies that I got to uncover those stories. Right?

You have to go beyond general ed in our traditional schooling system, both public and private. You have to go beyond general ed to dive deeper to get to those true stories. And there's 2 observations as you were sharing that that that came to mind. Number 1, we have these state standards that have and these checklists of, you know, your kid needs to know the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. And they need to know why the Hammurabi Code came and this and that and the other.

And how the Egyptians mummified mummies and and things like that. And it's it's it's this checklist, but for what? And I think that is, like, this big question, which is scary because it involves so much deschooling. What if we let our kids spend a whole year on ancient Egypt out of their interest and read living books on it and fictional accounts and and all of this, and we were okay with them not learning all of the quote, unquote state standards. Why are we even learning history in the first place?

Isn't it for us to learn from the past so that we ourselves are better people, make better decisions, have more empathy? I see the study of history as so interconnected to SEL learning, social emotional learning. I think that's the purpose, actually. Because Definitely. Knowing all the facts, by the time you're in 12th grade and you're not a changed person like, you've wasted 12 years if you're not a changed person based on the lessons of the past.

And I think that's just so incredibly transformative, too. An idea to think about and let go of some things as well in terms of what are these state standards telling us to do? Is this really what I want for my kiddos? And by the way, we're talking about history right now. How can living books transform the other disciplines, Anthony?

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No. No. This is great. I I completely agree with what you're saying. I had to memorize all of that stuff at school.

I can't remember any of it now. Like, I could give you a brief outline for the Roman Empire thing, but none of them changed me. I also read the Ramses series by Christian Jark back in high school. I remember so much about ancient Egypt and the different things that happened in the mummification processes just because they're in story. So the different subjects so geography so much of geography comes from your history.

You're talking about reading even your book and learning about Vietnam and the different locations of the different cities through Vietnam and everything like that. So geography, there's some fantastic living books. Richard Halliburton's book of marvels, he takes you on a tour as he went around the world. He was one of the first sort of adventure journalists back in the the 19 thirties, 19 forties, and he flew around the world. And he takes you into the Taj Mahal, and he hid out overnight and just describes the moon rising on the pools and walking through it.

He describes the the different Aztec places that he went and visited and and tells the stories of Machu Picchu and that kind of thing. And it just arouses both that wanderlust wanting to go and see these places for yourself, but also this respect for the people and the places and the different ways that they lived, and how the places that they lived affected, how they lived up on Machu Picchu, say they're up high on the top of the mountain. And that affects everything. Their geography affects everything about how they do life, and why they're there in the 1st place, dude. So I think for geography, it's quite simple, just reading some of these books and learning about all of these concepts.

There's some fantastic books for maths as well. There's number stories from long ago, which take you through stories of kids back at different times as they were developing these number systems around the world, and how you sort of had 1, 2, 3 lots. And then they developed more, and the different roman numerals, and how they came about. And you're learning all of these things through stories, and then they've got some activities for you to try and solve the different riddles and the like along with it. But it just makes it not only come alive, but breaks these huge abstract weird concepts.

Like, maths 1 plus 3 is a really abstract unusual concept, and it sort of shows how we had to come up with systems for counting for the practical reasons. I know. The question we all used to ask in school with maths is why do I need to learn this? And I'll be honest with a lot of things like trigonometry and calculus and everything, I have not used them very much since I finished school. But for the stuff that we do use every day, it's really great to understand the reasons why these came about and how people use them.

And and I I do love maths and trigonometry and everything like that. Reading the story of Euclid and how he came up with all of his sorts of things makes these maths relatable and real. If you want a more advanced thing, there was longitude by Davis Lovell, which is a fantastic story about how they the sailors needed to be able to track their longitude, but the difficulties that they faced and how they came up with that. It makes some things that but now with GPS and all that kind of thing, we don't appreciate because it's all just there in the palm of our hands. It makes us see the real problems that people had and the obstacles that they had to overcome and gives you an appreciation for that, which I find my kids then start putting into stuff now and going, okay, I've got this problem.

I need to try and and work out different ways to go about doing it and getting that attitude of discovery, I guess, the curiosity that you get exposed to with these other subjects. I've loved teaching them. Science is a really difficult one because the half life of knowledge is shortening all of the time. And a lot of the science that we learned in school now is superseded with new knowledge. And that's a wonderful thing about science is they have the hypothesis.

They test it. This is the best explanation at the moment. And as we learn more, that changes. So oftentimes, science books can be a bit controversial because they might not always have the exact up to date information. But for my kids, I love them just seeing the process, reading about different scientists, and seeing how they came up with their discoveries and made their discoveries and the difference that made, and then how things have been built on, and how we thought there was this many different elements.

And then we discover more, and we discover more. And so through reading about the scientists and how they did those things, they're getting a wonderful exposure to it all. And for nature study, you can read about different creatures and observe them and and that kind of thing. But then for them to get that humility, I guess, that what we know to be true at the moment, what we would think to be true at the moment, could well be superseded by something else as knowledge changes. And having that ability and knowledge that that you need to keep learning.

We always are gonna be learning about something that that journey never has a destination as they learn. And I think as we read amazing science books and learn those things, it can help to really drill at home that it's it's a never ending journey of of discovery, and that's that's wonderful. There's so much that we can learn in the there's a series of books called the secrets of the universe that I republish, and it goes into waves and relativity and matter and and all that kind of thing. I worked with the author to re revamp the whole series when I republished it because the science had changed in that time. There was new elements.

There was all the rest of it. And that was great to just see these experts loving to learn as well, and that's what I want to get across to my kids. There's a book, The Wonder Book of Chemistry, and it just helps you understand chemistry and the way that matter changes forms and everything through a series of it's basically an uncle talking to his niece and nephew, and they're asking questions. It's like, will you put the toast in the toaster, and it burns. You can never turn it back because and he sort of uses these real world examples to help illustrate these difficult processes of chemistries.

Yes. It can enrich so much. I wanna ask you, what are the challenges of exposing our children to living books? Is a lot of this literature is old, and the language is old as well. What advice would you give regarding some of these hurdles where sentences could be structured in ways our kids aren't used to and it might be hard to digest?

You know, I often think it's similar to when you have your child read their first Shakespeare play. It's just so hard to decipher. What encouragement would you give us on that regard?

Start slowly. And like like everything else, it's a a muscle that needs to be brought up. It's like switching from print to cursive, and it's just sort of getting that mental adjustment as they get used to things. So it starts slowly, but also the reason that many of the living books recommended are old is that the people putting the book lists and the curriculums together are trying to make sure it's as affordable and accessible as possible to people. And so they've chosen old books because their goal is that accessibility.

There's some wonderful books still being written now that are in today's language that are also fantastic. But the difficulty there is that they can go out of print and then the curriculum has a hassle with people saying, oh, I can't get it or it's expensive. So once you get used to using living books, you can find some fantastic modern, ones that you can, use also. But the the old ones have survived for so long for a reason as well, because they are so engaging to people as they read them. So if you start, start slowly, just do a little bit at a time.

Usually, what we do, especially when the kids are younger, is we get them to narrate. Some people say each sentence or paragraph when they're just beginning, but I like to think of it as each idea that comes across in what you're writing. Because usually it might be a few paragraphs to get across an idea. And once you get to that idea, you just ask your child to tell back what they've heard. And they don't need to get the words exact, and they might get things wrong.

But what they're doing is they're learning to, as they listen, filter the information, work out what is really saying. And then they put it in their own words and what they've gotten from it. And if they don't get exactly the same thing as you do, especially with literature, they're not wrong. Like, you're both right. It's just different people get different things based on their experiences and their knowledge.

And that's one thing I do love about the living book is rather than that being a test where you're trying to quiz them and try to find some esoteric fact that they haven't memorized. You're allowing your kids instead to give you what they have memorized, what they do understand, and what they do know. And that can help build their confidence, but it also is amazing as a parent to just see the depth of the points that the kids will take away from some of these things. So by using narration, it really helps the kids to learn how to pass the information that they're getting. But just please make sure you have given them an idea.

If you stop too often in the beginning, it's too hard because there's not really anything to latch onto and relate back. So by doing the narration, you're really helping you as well to make sure that your kids are being able to follow what's being read.

I love narration. It's something that we practice in our own homeschool. And I will admit when I first started having my kids do narrating, oral narrations in the beginning, it was a challenge. So when you said, it's a muscle, man, did I feel that deeply? Because

Yep.

I had to stop and go through and it's a challenge to do narrating as a group with 4 different children. And so figuring out how to do that was a challenge. But really, if we can't digest something and explain it back, do we actually even know it? Like, do we? Like, we can understand something maybe, but we don't really know something unless we can explain it.

That's why those of us who are knowledge workers and thought leaders, we learn the most with what we have to teach about. Right? Because we are the ones that have to do the research and digest it and put it in more digestible words for people to understand. There's one thing that I want to make sure not to miss and it's just it's one of the biggest benefits I have seen with living books. For those of you who are listening to this and you're like, Where's the practicality?

Well, I'm about to tell you. Scott and I, we ran our learning center for many years and one of the things that we did very well we were actually the best in, our city for this, was we did test prep. So we prepped kids for all types of standardized tests. The IC test, the ACT, the SAT, all of that. I cannot tell you.

I knew right off the bat because I did a lot of the verbal reasoning, sentence completion, reading comprehension prep for the kiddos. It is night and day. I could tell you on the very first session if a child was a reader. If a 16 year old kid sitting across from me was a reader or not. Because the difference in the vocabulary alone

And the ability to find the nuance of the word and just use the perfect word for a thing is okay. That is

Yes. And let me tell you, if you are a family who is dedicated to exposing your children to living books, please don't buy a vocabulary curriculum. Please don't. You don't need it. You really don't need it.

But here's the other thing, too, is that when we are reading living books, we are even and we're reading those out loud, we are reading words that aren't in our typical vocabulary as parents. Even if you are a well parent with a very large vocabulary, you're still gonna be saying words out loud that aren't normally in your daily language. And that is just vital. It's okay. You don't have to stop and make them do a vocabulary journal.

Trust me. You don't. Literally just exposing your kiddos to living books, they will that alone, they will outscore their peers on any standardized test because of that piece of vocabulary, that critical thinking. I mean, I can't even I can go on and on about the difference. Those kiddos that we got into those Ivy League schools, they were readers.

But more than that, they weren't readers because I'm a reader because I have to get into an Ivy League school. No, they actually loved literature and read for leisure. And those kids went really far in life because of the skills that reading gave them. And I was shocked this past year. My son read a really complicated book and I remember picking up this book in high school and it being a challenge and putting it down.

And my son, in 7th grade, could completely read the book. I was shocked. And I was like, okay. I guess I'm not messing this up too bad.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah.

So you're right. It it really is a muscle that to stretch. Let's talk a little bit about cultural differences because raising our kids and homeschooling our kids, I'm in the States, it's really easy to live a small life. It's easy to just go to church, go to co op, homeschool. I, in particular, something I didn't realize I would miss so much is I was born and raised in Southern California and in my own high school, I was a minority as a Caucasian.

My husband is Mexican. We now live in the suburbs of Denver. And I really miss the cultural diversity that I mourn for my own kiddos, too. Let's talk a little bit about if you are someone like me who lives in a very Caucasian area, kind of the suburbs, what are the benefits of picking up books about different cultures?

This is where I think living books really come to the fore. I live in Australia, we did a disgustingly effective job of eliminating a lot of our First Nation people. So many of us now don't even know many First Nation people ourselves. Much like you have a prison issues with minorities in the US, we have crazily disproportionate amounts here. And so it can easily breed a lot of racism.

And so I've been intentionally getting my kids who haven't had the opportunity to meet a lot of First Australian people to to read some books set during the colonization of Australia. And there's one that my youngest is reading at the moment, the Eye of the Eagle. And it's about some young kids whose family is massacred, and they have to try to make their way, and they join up with another tribe, but then the farmers are poisoning the water holes and doing all these other things. And just giving them an idea of the terrible things that we did so that they can understand that these generational traumas continue on. I mean, when I was born, we were still taking 1st nation babies away from their mothers to rehouse with white people as part of a compassionate program, which has caused untold trauma still.

And so just giving them that understanding and that empathy so that they can have a little bit of an understanding of what's gone before. And they may not get any answers of what to do from it. But just that an understanding that these are really complex problems, and we just need to be aware of what's going on so we can have some compassion and empathy. I listened to an audiobook recently. Trejo, this Danny Trejo's autobiography, he's a Mexican actor with a huge tattoo of a, woman with the wearing ass sombrero on her on his chest.

And he grew up in the the gangs and was in San Quentin and everything before he became an extra on some movies, and then became a leading man. I think he holds the record for being killed the most times on film. But his story of the toxic masculinity that was part of the latino culture back as he was young, and the abuse that he had, and then him learning as he had daughters and everything to challenge those ideas was so eye opening for me to experience both a different background to what I'd ever grown up with. But just to understand that when people talk about challenges, just because I haven't experienced them and just because I may not notice them in my day to day life, doesn't mean that they don't happen to other people. I think so often we view everything through our own prism and our own lens.

And if something has never affected us, we think it mustn't really affect others as well. And I think just the understanding through living books we get of other people's lives and other people's journeys. I think for my kids, even if the most important thing is then just to have that humility that other people's experiences are as equally as valid as their own, even if my kids might not completely understand it, and just allow them to have a conversation point about it rather than coming in with formed ideas about what other people must be feeling, I guess.

Yeah. And that's hotly contested here because here in the states, there is a movement to tear down statues and cancel. Now when we're talking about living books, we're talking about, not always, but let's just go here for a second, some of these older books where you're reading it and you're you're reading out loud to your kid and you're like, okay, I'm not gonna read that sentence. Like, eek. Right?

You cringe because this is not this is racist. This sentence is literally racist. And so, can we talk a little bit about that? Because Absolutely. For this reason, a lot of people are scared of assigning these books to their kiddos or maybe and you are in the business of bringing books back into print and making them available.

There's gonna be ideas in there, like, not just with the science being outdated, like you mentioned previously, but

cultural Cultural attitudes.

Yeah. Cultural attitudes that are just, wow. Okay. Do I want my kid reading this? And so there's this what we tend to do with immature thinking, humans in general, is just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Right? What is your approach to this? Hi, mama. If you like my social media content and my show, I'm pretty sure you will love my book, Homeschool Rising, Shattering Myths, Finding Courage, and Opting Out of the School System. My book is for homeschool parents, both veteran and new, and the perfect book to hand any homeschool skeptics in your life so so they can better understand why you've chosen this amazing lifestyle.

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My approach as a parent and as a republisher, I have to look at all different sides of this. It's challenging of someone who's republishing books just because if I start to change something, anything I don't change is sort of implied as I approve of. So then when do you stop is a really difficult line. I republished a book called Heroes Every Child Should Know. And there's people like Robert e Lee and other characters that are there along with ones who are going right back in history.

So for something like that, I put a little page in the front just to talk about the book contains biographies of many different people through history. Some of them from the past that probably quite mythologized. But other ones are more recent, and so we know a lot more about their lives. And while there may be some traits that they had that are things that we want to nurture in our kids, nobody's perfect. We're all human, and we're all product of our times and environments.

And looking back now, some of the other things about some of these characters could be quite abhorrent to us. And so it's important for us to remember that we are all people with many facets and not to idolize a person, but just to find traits in people that we can try to emulate and also see things in people that we want to be really conscious of not emulating. So that's it's a tricky line. With with my kids, I try to make sure that I have read the books and know what they're going to be exposed to just so we can have conversations about it. I think sometimes it's really important for them to come across things that make them uncomfortable, because then they're having to wrestle with it.

It's something that they're going, hang on. This doesn't feel right. This that's isn't right. What's going on? To sit with that and work out exactly what it is and why that is, I think, is a really important thing for us, to be able to grow.

So some of them, things like huckleberry phenol often leave because it is a product of the time. And he was seen as quite controversial for being sympathetic to the African Americans back in his day. I grew up as a big Wilbur Smith fan, and when he was first publishing, he had the South African version of the Secret Service tapping his phone and following him. He was walking on a beach one time years later, and this guy came out and said, Wilbur Smith? He's like, yes.

He Said I had to listen to every single one of your phone calls, and you're one of the most boring people I ever had to listen to. But they saw him as an agitator who was trying to get sympathy for the Africans. Then later on people look at those same books and see them as racist for the colonial stereotypes that they portray. So exactly the same thing as our culture changes can be seen as too progressive, and then add another couple of decades and it's seen as old and racist. And I think even that in itself is so important for us because just like with knowledge, equality and and seeing people as the same and treating everybody the same is a continual journey.

And the pendulum keeps swinging, and we need to see that even our attitudes now, while we may think we're progressive because we look back, you know, 30, 40 years and some things might be better, there's still always a long way to go. And the pendulum things are always shifting, and you're always compensating and correcting. And I think being aware of that is such an important thing for our kids that these books can get across as they see how attitudes and racial things have changed through the years. But also be aware that this is how people were treated not that long ago. There is generational trauma that lasts from that or distrust of authority that may cause people to react very differently to us in exactly the same situation.

It's so easy to judge. And we're in a society that loves ad hominem attacks on everybody. Right? I can't trust this. People do it with me, with my own book.

If they don't like my book on homeschooling, they just figure out a way to attack me. And then then they can discount the book. Right? It's so tricky. But I think it's nuanced.

And when I come across passages in books, it really depends. Sometimes I will omit a sentence if I'm not in the mood.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Like, okay. We gotta get to the museum. So alright. Or sometimes, I'll stop and I'll I'll go there. But I always make sure to to ask the kiddos what things do we believe today that you think maybe in 20 years people will totally disagree with?

Because it's not that I am condoning anything that we read, but what I don't want to do to put seeds in for my kiddos is with their nose up, snobbly, judging everything they read Like they are somehow better or more enlightened. Because when you really understand human nature and when you really study history, you know that humans really are the same. That we haven't changed. We haven't changed. It's just rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat in terms of our behavior and what we do and pride and this and all of that.

And when we love to approach authors and we love to approach famous men and women in history, we want them all to be heroes. We want them all to be perfect. And they're not. You know, we like to idealize people of the past or great authors. And it's it's fascinating to have that conversation as your kids get older.

Because I have it very early and pretty much with everything we come across that's controversial or that is not okay, we have that conversation. And it's interesting how the conversations have progressed as my children have gotten older. And I love you've mentioned a couple of times you've used the word humility. I think that's such an important part about approaching living books, about approaching life, and having a humility that we really only can understand the world through our own eyes. Asking your kids the question, okay, this author was so comfortable with this idea that he or she was willing to write it into this book.

This was not considered wrong when this author wrote this book. What do you think about that? Right? And that conversation is such a worthy conversation and I tend to when we're talking about history and first nation people, I don't shy away from, you and First Nation people, I don't shy away from, you know, we've had our government is is amazing how it came to pass. And then there's also these atrocities and we can't we have to have it all in balance.

And as it, not that anyone needs to do what I need to do, but what I tend to do is if I read to my kiddos something that's from any one side, I always try to find the opposite side and then read a book from the opposite side. I kind of view it as a math equation a little bit in my head. Not not perfect by any means. Nice. But but making sure that, okay, if we're reading about the early colonies, I'm also going to bring in a book about the First Nation people and their encounter with the colonists.

I'm gonna do both of those things when we're doing that. And it's nuanced, and it's gray, and it's so uncomfortable. Right?

That's it. Exactly. Each side's trying to do the best for their side. They themselves.

Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Let's get practical here. I could talk to you all day.

But I wanna get practical because I know that you have some neurodivergencies in your home. You have you share that and you're comfortable sharing that. I wanna talk about how living books can help kiddos who have autism or maybe a kiddo with dyslexia that is really struggling to read. How can living books help homeschooling?

I will preface this by saying my children's neurodiversities, even if they may have the same overall label as any of yours, can show up so differently. And so anything I'm saying is just what's worked for my kids. That's as much as I I can share. All of our kids, even ones that don't have neurosis, are so different and with their own needs. They're individual people.

And that's why we love homeschooling because we can cater to the people we've got. My oldest son is ADHD and dyslexic. My middle son is on the autism spectrum level 2 and has severe verbal comprehension issues. And my youngest is absolutely the most bouncing off the wall ADHD craziness. He's wonderful.

So we've had some some quite challenges. My oldest loved literature from when he was young, listening to audio books whenever he could if I couldn't be reading to him and devouring them. He really struggled with reading. He just could not get the phonemes to make sense and to stick together properly. Could Could identify all the letters, no worries.

But when it came to that next step, it took him a very long time to be confident reading. And for us, that's where audiobooks were fantastic, LibriVox and that kind of thing to be able to listen to them when he wanted to, and I was doing a lot of reading aloud. But Twaddle was brilliant for him to get that confidence. The words were simple. And so we just used the the books as a tool.

They had a purpose, and he was reading these to build his confidence and be able to do it. Because if it will get him, you know, an extra 50 hours reading over the month because he's reading these books, that's a lot of practice of making sure the words are staying in order and and getting that going. So he was reading over here, we have the I know the 7 story treehouse and 14 story treehouse, and it all goes up. And and they're ridiculous books. I don't think there's anything of literary value in them whatsoever, but they were wonderful, and I will always love them.

For them, helping my kid to just get that confidence and just help everything to click with his reading, and now he devours absolutely everything. When with Charlotte Mason, you often don't start till the kids are 6 years old, and I was so excited to start with the 2 of my kids together. And I had everything prepared out, and it was clear from an hour into our very first day that this was not going to work with my my oldest two children because the difference in understanding was so vast. I probably should have been aware when we'd read them Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at night, and we're right at the very end, and Paxton goes, who who's Charlie? And then, like, he's he's the protagonist.

He's the whole the whole book. He's he he found it going

to grab my coffee. You all just take off

my coffee. So but he just has such verbal comprehension issues that he he was struggling to put it together. And that's there's no judgment on that. It's just what you're dealing with, and it's great to realize that so we can cater things differently. So for him, we gave him a bit of extra time before we really got too hard into schooling, and we would do simpler books because the goal of educating them is for them to understand.

So we might find a picture book that gets across the point that we're trying to have our kids comprehend or wrestle with. So you sure, maybe the more literary fancier book would be better for most people, but if I force that on my middle son, he's gonna get nothing at all from it. So really, what is the point? I can force him to do something that is gonna make him less confident in himself and not understand it, or I can find something that's a bit easier, and he can he can grasp what's going on and build on that from there. And so for him, we just found simpler books.

Anything you're doing know what the point of it is. Any book you're reading know what they're trying to get from it. So that if something isn't working, you know what you're looking for when you're trying to swap something out or if they know okay. I'm sorry. This is tough, but you just gotta push through with this one or whatever else.

But if if you don't know the point of it, you've got no nowhere to go. And and that's my middle son having these difficulties has made it a lot more difficult than with my youngest son who is just the most crazy reader. We had to get him Kindle Unlimited because he was just costing way too much in books, and and we don't trust him not to lose library books. So but I don't want my middle son to feel that he's behind or backwards because his younger brother is overtaking him in all of these things. So we're trying to keep those 2 on slightly different streams with their books so that there's not that mental comparison that is natural between children.

So you're just trying to find the right tool that will accomplish what you're trying to do. So whether it's a literary living book, whether it's a picture book that gets the same thing across, they're all tools that are trying to accomplish what they're doing.

And for those of you listening who feel so far away from being able to read a book like this to your kiddos, whether you're I remember when I first started reading out loud, my throat would get sore. My muscles would tighten up. And it took a while for me to be able to read out loud for a solid half hour, 45 minutes. I got there. Again, the muscle conversation.

But if you're listening right now and you feel so far from this, I just wanna encourage you that doing whatever it takes to have your kiddo fall in love with story is where to begin. So that could be a graphic novel. It could be babysitter's club, Hardy Boys, Treehouse. It could be that. But a trick is slip in something a little more meatier.

I remember when my son was in a total Hardy boys phase, complete Hardy boys phase. And I was just waiting. And I would give him something else. He reads what I give him, which that's nice. And I knew he'd get to a point where he'd get bored.

I knew it. And sure enough, he did. And he started because I had given him the the more beautiful meal, here and there, he started to get an appetite for that. And then, sure enough, that cafe's kind of ended. He got a little bit bored because those stories are just rinse and repeat.

And then, he solved the mystery on the first page and then started craving more. And he still we all read all sorts of things. But just remember that I love what you said. Just know why you're doing what you're doing. And having our kids fall in love with story is where to begin.

I want to make a little special note about something with reading comprehension. If you are a mama listening and you are even if your kiddo is phonetically reading just fine, but for some reason they don't seem to be grasping stories, Comprehension is something that is completely different than phonics and the ability to have fluency in your reading. Comprehension is different. It's a different skill. That is where we start to transition from learning to read to reading to learn.

And so pay attention. If your kiddo, if you feel like it's in one ear, out the other, they're reading a whole paragraph to you and then don't know what it means, look into their reading comprehension. We want our kids making movies in their head while they are reading. And generally, even when I come across an adult who tells me, I don't really like reading, I know that there is a gap there. Because all humans like story.

Universalists. We love story. So when someone tells me, I don't really like reading, right, but maybe they love movies. They love movies because they don't have to do that, the, movie in their head. They don't have to make the movie in their head.

So that could be something. I just wanna put that little thing in your mind that if you are seeing that, feel free to email me and say, hey, I listened to this podcast with Anthony and, yeah, my kid's not comprehending. What do I do? Please, you guys, if you are struggling with anything in your homeschooling, I'm telling you right now, email us. We would love to help you and point you to resources and point you in the right direction.

So I wanna move on to Anthony. We, love talking about game changing ideas on this show. Do you have some message just regarding your field right now that you just wanna shout from the rooftops that you wish every parent would know and understand about living books, what would that be? Hi there, podcast family. If our episodes bring a smile to your face, challenge you, or spark your thoughts, tap that like and subscribe button to stay connected with us.

Also, we'd truly love to hear your voice in the comments. Your insights and stories are what makes this community special. And not only does it allow us to hear you, but your engagement helps us reach more people and spread our message. So go ahead and don't be shy. Like, subscribe, and comment.

Mine would be because I started off in the Charlotte Mason world, people get quite married to certain curriculum that are showing Charlotte Mason's methods. And I I think my message would be that do not be so married to the curriculum that you feel that you're a failure if you can't do every single piece of it. We all have different families. The reason we're homeschooling is so that we can tailor these things to our kids and our situation. So if you see all the other parents talking about how they're doing this or that or or whatever else is going on or some book that everybody loves that just is not clicking for you and your family, don't feel bad if you find something else because the goal is for your kids to learn and to grow and to get something from it.

And if that's in a different way to how some other people's families do it, that is fine. You're running your race and doing what's best for you and your kids. So never feel down if you're not accomplishing as much as what you feel other people are or getting the same from some resource that they are really loving.

And I'm gonna do a follow-up question.

Yeah.

What is something in your field that annoys you and bothers you and you just disagree with and you just wish people knew that?

Oh, wow. This is a great question. I think, again, the fact that you have to do absolutely everything according to if you're coming from the Charlotte Mason world, most it is the most amazing supportive community. So I I'm not. But you sometimes see I think and I think it comes from insecurity, this feeling that you have to do every single part.

I would call myself an eclectic homeschooler with a focus on living books and sort of Charlotte Mason's philosophies because I I pull in whatever works best for my family. And while I would love to be able to follow every single little bit of what Charlotte Mason says sometimes, it's just not practical for our lives, as they are at the moment with our our kids and their neurodivergence. And so for me, the thing that really bugs me, I think, is when people haven't been able to develop that confidence to be able to step out and do things themselves because they've been told that they have to do every single little thing that the curriculum is telling them to do. That just makes me sad because I think they can life is stressful and difficult enough as a parent, let alone a homeschooling parent. And so just be kind to yourself, and don't be trying to keep up with everybody else.

You're running your race. And

Yes.

To do the

And living books aren't just for the classical Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. Not at all. Living books are for everybody.

Well, Chip Chip Heath, who's a Stanford professor, he asked his students to give a report on nonviolent crime. And 90% of them came up and just gave statistics. And after afterwards, he asked them to to talk about it. There was one student who came up and told story for what he had. 63% could remember the story, and only 5% remember the statistics that were given.

The, London School of Business did a similar study, and they found that people retain only 5 to 10% of information when it's statistics alone. But when they hear a story, it was in the 63 to 70% range. So no matter what homeschool you are, if you're wanting your kids to be able to retain information and remember it later, And for long term, rather than just rote studying where they forget it straight after the test, a living book is easier and more effective than these other methods of just trying to cram information on its own.

Hey, I never asked you this, and we should talk about this. What is Living Books Press? What do you do?

Okay. So when we first started homeschooling, money was incredibly tight, and there was a book everybody was recommending, The Wonderland of Nature. And it was gonna be $60 for for that, and we would have to save up for about a month to have that spare cash for for that book. And I went into a little church thrift store, and there was an old hardcover copy for $2, and I was squealing and jumping up and down. I was so excited.

And I thought this is such a barrier to entry for people trying to use these curriculums. There's the decision fatigue of trying to work out what editions sometimes of old ones because there's such a plethora of cheap awful copies people are throwing up on Amazon cheaply or else they're still under copyright and they're out of print and they're costing people an arm and a leg to be able to find a copy if it does turn up. And I was just I knew that there was no way I could have put together a book list or anything like that. And I was so grateful to the people who'd come before and had put those together. I thought, well, I can't I don't have the knowledge at the moment to help anybody else, but I can take away this barrier to entry of these books being so expensive or difficult to obtain.

And so I just started out producing the books that reprinting a couple of the books that, were called unicorns because they were so rare and hard to find. And then I kept getting requests for more books, and I just haven't stopped. So I yeah. I just been trying to make it easier for people to use living books within their their education, whether they're Charlotte Mason's classical education or just eclectic doing something else, just wanting something that will make it a lot easier for their kids to retain the information.

When you started out, were they hard copies?

Yeah. I was initially only going to do digital, but then I found I could do hard copies as well. So I've been doing that since the start because I find that I read a lot better from a physical copy. When I was reading to my kids from my screen, I didn't know how much longer was there to go in the chapter, and that would affect how I would read out loud. I think there's a natural way that you're building up when you know you're coming to a conclusion.

And I found that my children narrate it terribly whenever I was reading from a screen, but when I was reading from a hard copy, they did a lot better. And that was nothing to do with their abilities. It was purely my way that I was reading. I think I read a lot more confidently coming from a physical copy.

If we want one of your hard copies that you've reprinted, do we have to pay for Australian shipping?

No. I've got several printers through the US, and so the order is just sent directly from the US to you. Or from Europe, I've got printers in Europe as well.

And then I gotta know what's your best selling book? Oh,

you know, I am hopeless in that I just try to make it easy for the community. And I I really don't pay much attention at all to my sales. If it's something that a regular customer has asked me to to reprint it, and if I only sell 20 copies, I'll try to do it just because they're wanting it. But my bestsellers would it it fluctuates a little bit. I think the books of marvels by Richard Halliburton that I I brushed against earlier are very popular.

They're probably my desert island books that I'd take just because I enjoy them so much myself. The home geography by Charlotte Mason is definitely a big seller. And then I've also done there's the Burgess animal and bird books that have been around forever, but I've reprinted those with rather than having 30 odd old paintings. They've got a 100 plus color images of close ups of all different things, and, I've redone those with all of that information, which have been quite good sellers also.

Oh, man. We love those. That's fantastic. And, hey, I think you've prepared something special just for our listeners today. Did you?

Yeah. Absolutely. So at my website, you can go to livingbookpress.com/christyfaith, and you'll have a special download there that you can get, which is just about how to use living books for any homeschool. I'm really passionate about helping people outside of our little bubble access these books. So it'll just be a bit of information about what a living book is and how you can start to introduce them into your home school as well as some places to find different book lists so that you can track down books that might be suitable for whatever you're needing.

And there'll also be a 20% discount code that'll last for 4 months after the episode airs. You can just do christy faith

at Oh, yay. I was hoping that you'd give everybody a discount. That's fantastic. Okay. So there's 2 links that we're gonna put up in the show notes then.

There's gonna be the link to your free download for mamas who are interested in learning more about living books, how to incorporate it, links to book lists. That is key. I love that you're including that because we all want those book lists. And so thank you for doing that. So you can get that free download.

We'll put the link there and then we'll also make sure to put the coupon code. Thank you so much for giving us that. It was such a pleasure having you on today, Anthony, to talk all about living books. I hope this is not the last time that you come on the show. Thanks for being with us today.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a absolute pleasure to speak with you. And if anybody has any questions that I can help with, just shoot me an email from the contact form on my website, and, I'll do my best to help you because Wedbush Homeschool is all supporting each other and getting through this.

Yes. And if you guys are wondering, I have gotten to know Anthony on a personal level. He is the real deal. He truly just wants to help us and make things more accessible and affordable for us. And I love supporting the companies that support us as homeschooling families.

So when you purchase from his website, just know that you are purchasing from a family business who deeply cares about you, your kiddo, giving them a feast of ideas. So make sure to click that link in the show notes, and we will see you next time.