Honey for a Child's Heart

What is home? My favorite definition is "a safe place," a place where one is free from attack, a place where one experiences secure relationships and affirmation. It's a place where people share and understand each other. Its relationships are nurturing. The people in it do not need to be perfect; instead, they need to be honest, loving, supportive, recognizing a common humanity that makes all of us vulnerable.

No book is really worth reading at the age of 10 which is not equally worth reading at the age of 50.

This savoring of life is no small thing. The element of wonder is almost lost today with the onslaught of the media and gadgets of our noisy world. To let a child lose it is to make him blind and deaf to the best of life.

parents who read widely together with their children are going to be those who most influence their children,

Every child needs to see the possibilities of being human, watch the consequence of choices, and have their hearts stretched by goodness and courage in action.

Some children like how-to-do-it or all-about-everything type books, but I suspect parents like them best because they look so educational. These really should be in a separate category because they don't usually classify and literature but are more nearly manuals of information. Paul Hazard suggests that instead of pouring out so much knowledge on a child's soul that it is crushed, we should plant a seed of an idea that will develop from the inside.

What kind of books? "Sories that make for wonder. Stories that make for laughter. Stories that stir one within with and understanding of the true natures of courage, of love, of beauty. Stories that make one tingle with high adventure, with daring, with grim determination, with the capacity of seeing danger through to the end. Stories that bring our minds to kneel in reverence; stories that show the tenderness of true mercy, the strength of loyalty, the unmawkish respect for what is good.

In these questions are the three elements which open up any text: Fact-what does it say? Interpretation-what does it mean? Application-what does it mean to me?

Someone once said that the worst features of an era are accented in the children’s books of that period. Book by book our societal problems were dumped into children’s books. What editors called “realism” is really adult betrayal, violence, sexual indiscretions, alcoholism, and the Big D’s: death, divorce, disease, and drugs. Books with inconsequential plots and characters became thinly disguised “moralisms”—the kind of moralisms that come from a nonjudgmental culture urging readers to suspend judgment, to become understanding and noncondemning, and to realize their sexuality.

Literature is the royal road that enables us to enter the realm of the imagination.

Children have two basic needs, writes Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving: they need both milk and honey from their parents. Milk symbolizes the care given to physical needs: brush your teeth, drink your orange juice, eat your vegetables, get enough sleep. Honey symbolizes the sweetness of life, that special quality that makes life sing with enjoyment for all it holds. Fromm says, “Most parents are capable of giving milk, but only a minority of giving honey, too.” To give honey, one must love honey and have it to give. Good books are rich in honey, and hence the title of this book.

What kind of books? 'Stories that make for wonder. Stories that make for laughter. Stories that stir one within with and understanding of the true natures of courage, of love, of beauty. Stories that make one tingle with high adventure, with daring, with grim determination, with the capacity of seeing danger through to the end. Stories that bring our minds to kneel in reverence; stories that show the tenderness of true mercy, the strength of loyalty, the unmawkish respect for what is good.

Affirming, nurturing people influence others far beyond their intention simply because they provide rich soil in which individual personalities can grow.

We influence by what we are and by what we do. In one sense, it could be said that we influence others simply by being.

Since words are the way we communicate experiences, truth, and situations, who should know how to use them more creatively than people who are aware of their Creator? The world cries out for imaginative people who can spell out truth in words that communicate meaningfully to people in their human situation.

The surprise and beauty of words may break on a child like the dawning of a fresh world.

Reading should offer the solace of hope and goodness, of another world where truth and right triumph.

A good book is always an experience containing spiritual, emotional, and intellectual dimensions.