A Presbyterian minister told me that many of the young parents in her inner city church were and are in great need of basic training, so she extended help by offering a Sunday afternoon class. No, not the kind of class with a popular Christian parenting book or a video channel with the latest blend of faith and child psychology. Rather, her session centered on healthy family habits, beginning with the most basic interactions.

In this class, she described a typical parenting day with ups and downs and casually mentioned bedtime prayer and stories. By the expressions she saw, she instantly knew that few of the parents and guardians prayed or regularly read to their children. She hadn’t even made it to the point in her notes where she asked them to read the Bible. And so, a solitary parenting class became a full year of discipleship.

Yes, studies show that the ease and rise of screen time competes for these precious evening minutes or any gap of time in the day, but the HarperCollins UK survey from 2025 also reveals that fewer parents see a purpose for reading together. They simply don’t do it. The lack of purpose is altogether disheartening. It is likely what my minister friend discerned—that all families do not know that spending purposeful time interacting together as readers can strengthen God-given bonds, love, and affection. My friend responded to the need by adding weekly classes and introducing these families to many activities and ideas, not to fill schedules but to show them that they could shape who they were becoming as families with God in the center.

According to cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, when children develop a sense that being a reader is part of who they are, a virtuous cycle of growth begins. It’s not just how they feel about reading. It becomes a daily choice whenever time offers an opportunity. And reading together is about what we give and receive. It can be more than a school reading program, more than minutes we count, more than conversation, even more than the nurturing moments of holding a child on a lap. These times can hold greater potential if we can see it.
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In Wondrous Reading: Encountering the Catholic Faith in Children’s Literature, LuElla D’Amico makes a spiritual distinction that equips those struggling to see reading’s purpose. The shared literary space with our children not only cultivates reading habits but also “nurture[s] a space for meaningful conversations that can bond you and develop your spiritual acumen.” This intention sets it apart from other family guides. It is with others, in communion, that our minds and hearts are engaged, not only our emotions but also our spirits. . . .​

They have multiplied across my nightstand, and the stack is growing. Sticky notes, a pencil, junkmail postcards, and a receipt work as placeholders.

I actively read three to four books. I read a few pages from each book every night or switch from book to book. I have plenty of other reading friends who keep disciplined systems like these, sometimes with up to ten books.

Unfortunately, I started four books in December and have not returned to them since. Can I blame my attention in a distracted age? Certainly. Did I spend a lot of late night hours visiting instead of reading? You bet, but a few months have now passed. Is a book or two ready for the fatal Did-Not-Finish pile? Also a possibility. But I wonder if it’s something else that leads me to lay aside certain books.

Here are two examples. For a decade, I have wanted to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, from 1920, This Side of Paradise. I’ve taught many of Fitzgerald’s short stories and The Great Gatsby countless times. I might never find a character to truly cheer for in his work, but that is my opinion of course and also not the point of fiction. My margin notes and lines and boxes of every color reveal how I’ve learned and reflected on Fitzgerald’s works over the years as I taught them. I relish so much of his style and phrasing while I can also appreciate his critical eye of American society. Yet I stopped halfway through his instant bestseller. I don’t like Amory. I have left him at age twenty in the middle of Princeton in chapter 3, and I’m not sure I care enough to read more. I feel a certain stubbornness or maybe ambivalence. . . 

It was a simple tweet. I posted a picture from the second day of school, showing my own annotations of a C.S. Lewis essay with the caption, “Teaching students annotation means modeling my own.” To my surprise, author Stephen Chiger responded that he taught the same, most notably in his book Love & Literacy published in 2021 for Uncommon Schools, a public charter network in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
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Intrigued, I wanted to see if a design to foster reading and literacy in urban public schools might share some practices with classical education. The premise of the book is a true ideal: “This is what love in a literacy classroom looks like: a love for the conversation, love for the text, and love for the ideas they both spark. When that includes all students, magic happens.” I kept reading.

In the history of education in America, many Americans no longer know how common schools became more than an idea. Nor do they know who made the first strides in these efforts.

Thomas Jefferson attempted to establish a decentralized public school system more than once, a plan based on localized districts within counties. In his 1778 “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” he stressed the need for vigilant citizens who would constantly be on guard against the ambition of rulers, especially at the state or federal levels. Jefferson wanted to educate all students as future citizens in a republic and at the same time provide expanded opportunities for men to develop into the future political leaders of Virginia.

At his 1838 Lyceum Address in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln advocated that schools should teach a reverence for our American democracy: “Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.”

Building on this idea of citizenship, William Holmes ​​McGuffey (1800–1873) strove to openly cultivate Christian character by developing readers in the growing American West independent of British influence. The McGuffey Readers introduced students to the classics, to morality, and to good character. Seven million readers were sold before 1850 with thirty-seven states adopting them by 1890. McGuffey’s influence held for decades.
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In his examination of McGuffey’s life and curriculum, John H. Westerhoff weaves a biography within a fascinating history of education in the early 1800s. The idea of common schools was growing. Westerhoff’s research clearly shows how McGuffey and his original Readers made a significant impact on nineteenth-century education through the use of moral teaching, civics, story, and phonics....

I received a rejection last week. From one year ago. An agent whose work I admire had requested a full manuscript for my middle grade novel.​

Andrews has a wonderful way of describing what it is by what it isn’t. I was captured by her comments on what she called “the identity race” that we see in every type of schooling—public, private, home, or co-op. We can mistakenly train children and teens with questions like “What are you good at?” rather than “Who are you really?” When we equate schooling with performance and doing, we mislead our students and cause them to ask, “Is anything good enough ever?” Here, she poignantly cites the account of the prodigal son and his brother in Luke 15. In this instance, both boys saw themselves as doers, employees, rather than as sons of a loving father.

Andrews leads us through scripture and literature to show us the truth of Proverbs 29:25 — the fear of man is a snare because we become man-pleasers. She is clear. We will never know it all and neither will our children or our students. They need to know this from the beginning.​

AS I HAVE reread lots of C.S. Lewis for the past two months, I was delighted by his many timely suggestions in An Experiment in Criticism. Lewis truly shuns critics and their systems. He would have us ask what benefit literary criticism offers if each theory presents but one angle. But more than that, the critics have spent so much time developing their critical theories that they just might have forgotten why they began writing about reading in the first place.

Tongue-in-cheek, Lewis says we are to leave them, the critics, to their own (now better informed) reactions because “When I inquire what helps I have had in this matter [in understanding what I read] I seem to discover a somewhat unexpected result. The evaluative critics come at the bottom of the list.”

I had to laugh aloud at that. Let's all boot the critics!

More than anything Lewis reminds us that the value of what we read lies with the reader alone-- 

MAN IS THE REAL ALIEN.
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I reread a few classic short stories this week, one by an American and one by a Frenchman. In each story, man was this dissatisfied creature who couldn't find himself whether on Earth or Mars or Minerva. He tainted everything he touched.

Through science fiction as a genre, this avenue of thought is prevalent. It's the best of social criticism, albeit a veiled philosophy--

It's a disturbing but simple pattern. Humans introduce music or a virus or a bomb and a civilization is forever changed. Consider Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, a seminal apocalyptic work from 1959. Yes, it deals with the effects of a nuclear war on the small town of Fort Repose, Florida, but it began with an inciting accident in Syria. Post-war life shows the natural and realistic breakdown of society amid its plucky and frequently criminal citizens.

The genre is a simple yet provoking tool. The stories may explore new places and settings but really they depict man's true nature and often the consequence of choice. I have many favorites including Orson Scott Card's series and Isaac Asimov's short stories, but I most frequently recommend the list below:

1. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury (1950) A short story collection that chronicles the colonization of Mars, it depicts mankind fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth. The primary conflict lies between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists.
2. Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne (1864) German professor Von Hardwigg believes there are volcanic tubes going toward the center of the Earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their guide Hans encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards.
3. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953) Books are illegal, firemen burn them, and no one is allowed to think on their own. Bradbury draws attention to the things that control us and reminds us that we may not be as free as we think.
4. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells (1897) Describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry. The Tor Classics edition is perfect.
5. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959) Set in a Roman Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. It's a long-haul read that's deep in scope.

Share your favorite short or long science fiction reads in the comments section, especially why you love a particular story!

MOST OF MY STUDENTS would like to do other things than read a few chapters of required reading of an evening. For any literature teacher, what’s worse is that they can easily find free poem, chapter, novel, and play summaries with great ease online. After all, summaries are so much shorter, aren’t they?

​So one of my first tasks of the year is to appeal to their integrity with a lesson from the Psalms. Let’s start with this. If I read a summary of a chapter in the Bible, what do I lose? Consider Psalm 23. This version comes to us from Shmoop--