Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill (South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014)
As a young child I fell in love with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, and naturally ate up the rest of the series when I discovered it. The earlier books (particularly Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy) remain my favorites, and having now read Pioneer Girl I better know why. The first few books in the series are full of the delight of a child and a child's-eye view that paints pioneer days with glory: the joy of good work, good food, open spaces, hope, family togetherness, and lots of "Inch by Inch" hippie naiveté. As the story goes on, however, the children grow older, and adult worries and realities intrude. Plus, I've never gotten over my childhood dislike of of romance stories, and if anything, coming-of-age stories are even worse. I identify a lot with Peter Pan.
Pioneer Girl was Wilder's original, unpublished memoir, from which grew the Little House series, as well as many of daughter Rose Wilder Lane's writings. It is full of the adult realities behind all the books. As such, it is informative, even fascinating—but also a sharp reminder that it takes more than a rake, a hoe, and a piece of fertile ground to make a garden, or a life. Don't get me wrong; this is no exposé, revealing the deep, dark secrets behind the children's books. It's just that it made me realize that I'd rather keep my genealogy real and my children's stories warm-and-fuzzy.
There is a lot of genealogy in Pioneer Girl, as Hill has painstakingly identified the people that Wilder wrote of, even in passing. Reading it reminds me of my work for Phoebe's Quilt, only a lot more extensive. "Extensive" is the word for Hill's annotations. Genealogy, comparing versions of the materials, analyzing writing style, researching historical realities, and explaining cultural references in minute detail; whatever it is, Hill's work is extensive. Some of that I appreciated, and some I did not. Although the book is clearly written for adults, Hill seems to assume that her readers are no more knowledgeable than the children who were the intended audience for the Little House series. She explains common cultural knowledge in excruciating detail; had she been analyzing my first paragraph above, she would have provided publisher information for the books, provided the lyrics for the song, explained about hippies, defined the romance and coming-of-age genres, and told the story of Peter Pan, including its author, date of publication, and cultural significance. I have to admit I prefer not to be considered completely ignorant, even if it means I have to look some things up.
Serious Little House devotees will find it worthwhile to read Pioneer Girl. I found it encouraging to learn that while the books are deliberately fiction, and have taken liberties with some of the facts, most notably by leaving out significant events and rearranging the order of others, Little House is no mere "inspired by" work that bears little to no resemblance to the facts. The stories ring true because they mostly are true. But people's lives simply don't unfold the way a good story does, and Laura Ingalls Wilder chose to craft her tales of American pioneer life with all the skill of a novelist.
Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin (Crown Publishers, 2015)
This book started slowly for me, though not for bad reasons: I spent too much time (and not enough) trying to answer some of the self-examination questions Rubin asks at the beginning. It might be useful to revisit them when I'm feeling less time pressure (as if that day will ever come!). I was somewhat frustrated because she keeps dividing the world into categories—Are you an Upholder, a Questioner, an Obliger, or a Rebel? A Marathoner, Sprinter, or Procrastinator? A Finisher or an Opener?—and all too often I find myself a true mélange, which leaves me unable to get as much from her later prescriptions as I otherwise might. I bogged down again over her preoccupation with diet, and her low-carb proselytizing. Finally, however, I realized that my less-than-enthusiastic reaction was primarily due to the fact that not a lot of what Rubin says was new to me. Her Happiness Project books (my reviews are here and here) have many of the same characteristics I dislike, but they were so full of new and fascinating material that it didn't matter. This time it did—or perhaps I just shouldn't have been in such a hurry to read it. This was one of my "How Not to Read a Book" books, and I didn't have the time to festoon it with my usual sticky notes. Hence, you get no quotations.
Be that as it may, there's still much of value, and I may re-read Better than Before at a later date. For now I'll just mention the idea that struck me the most, and which I've already started to implement in daily life: One of the greatest advantages to establishing habits is that it frees us from much decision making. I'm one of those who feels as if I have only so much decision-making power each day, and anything that conserves that supply for more important decisions must be a useful tool.
Rubin's ideas about the usefulness of scheduling, accountability, monitoring, first steps, convenience/inconvenience, habit pairing, and the do's and don'ts of distraction and rewards are not new, but it's helpful to have them together in one book. Better than Before is a good accessory to the Tiny Habits approach.
The Qur'an, English translation by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford University Press, 2004)
In the most important sense, a holy book cannot be subject to review. It matters little whether or not I consider it holy; the fact that others do puts it in a different category of book. For one thing, one must take greater care than normal to be respectful; that is merely good manners. It also means that as a non-Muslim, I cannot adequately judge the Qur'an on the basis for which it was intended, that is, as spiritual guidance and inspiration for Muslims. And yet, just as there is value in reading the Bible as literature, I believe the Qur'an may profitably be read in the same way. Not to mention that it might be valuable to have at least some familiarity with a book that is so important to the two and a half billion or so Muslims around the world.
There is also the problem of reading a translation. To Muslims, as I understand it, the Qur'an is a holy book in a much more literal sense than the Bible is to Christians. That is, the book itself is holy, not just its contents. What's more, it is the Qur'an in Arabic that really matters, in contrast to the Christian idea that the Bible speaks best to everyone in his native tongue. While it is certainly instructive—essential for seminary students and scholars—to read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, that is not considered a necessary skill for most Christians. For Muslims, however, you're not really reading or reciting the Qur'an unless it is in Arabic. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's a great unifying factor, as when Latin was essential in the Catholic church, when priests all over the world could understand each other, and the Mass was basically the same wherever you went. But there's no doubt that true understanding is difficult (impossible?) in a foreign tongue.
The Qur'an itself makes the point repeatedly that it is an Arabic revelation—though I can't resist mentioning that the point being made at the time was that it was in a language the ordinary people understood.
I don't have anything to compare it with, but I will nonetheless give high marks to this particular translation. It is not beautiful English, but it is easy to understand, and the translator has provided just the right amount of commentary, that is, enough to provide historical context and explain certain idioms and literary conventions, while not interrupting unduly the flow of the writing.
Despite all the above caveats, I'll share some of my observations, based on a single read-through: (More)
I appreciate that I can place books on hold at our library, knowing that they will be set aside for me as soon as they become available. But I do wonder about the timing sometimes. A while back, I had placed holds on Gretchen Rubin's Better than Before, and on Pioneer Girl, the annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Several people were ahead of me on the waiting list for each of them, so I was not expecting to read them anytime soon, though with one I was much closer to the top than the other. Wouldn't you know, both books suddenly became available at the same time—right before we left for several days out of town. I had to check them out, or lose my place in line, even though neither was suitable for taking with me on the trip.
We returned a week before the books were due. The normal lending period is three weeks, but for popular books it is reduced to two—with no possibility of renewal. Thanks to some other tasks taking top priority after our return, it wasn't until the weekend that I got very far into Better than Before. And Pioneer Girl? It has 400 pages. Wilder's actual text is in larger print, but the bulk of the book is Pamela Smith Hill's copious, detailed—yea, exhaustive—small-print footnotes. I read it in under 24 hours.
That's not how to read a book. It's like trying to quench your thirst while standing under a waterfall: you get exhausted trying to keep your balance, and end up more drowned than hydrated.
Nonetheless, I did get quite a bit from both books, enough for each to merit its own, upcoming, review. At first I was just going to include very brief comments on them in this post, but "very brief" and I don't keep company much. There's a reason my Tweets are mostly hyperlinks back here.
The Wise Woman: A Parable (also known as The Lost Princess, and as A Double Story) by George MacDonald (1875)
My project to read all of George MacDonald's books in chronological order (95 by 65 item #61) led me recently to The Wise Woman, and I can well see why C.S. Lewis classed it as one of MacDonald's very best stories, along with Phantastes, the Curdie books, The Golden Key, and Lilith. It's a delight through and through, and more than most fits my prime criterion for a good book: A good book inspires me to be a better person. I realize that distinction doesn't sound very impressive. I don't mean a moralistic book, or a book that tells me to be better; rather, one written in such a way as to provoke, deep within, both the desire to improve and the hope that improvement is not impossible.
The Wise Woman well deserves what Lewis said about the mythopoeic genre—at which MacDonald excelled:
[I]t produces works which give us (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest poets. It is in some ways more akin to music than to poetry—or at least to most poetry. It goes beyond the expression of things we have already felt. It arouses in us sensations we have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness and "possessed joys not promised to our birth." It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper; than our thoughts or even our passions, troubles oldest certainties till all questions are reopened, and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives.
Have I made it sound too intimidating? Never mind, then. It's short (116 pages), it's free on Kindle (under the title, A Double Story), and entirely grandchild-safe.
Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill by Gretchen Rubin (Ballentine Books, 2003)
What can Gretchen Rubin, famous for her books on happiness (The Happiness Project, Happier at Home), add to the multitude of books written about Churchill? Plenty, it turns out—at least if you are as ignorant of history as I am. Porter found it less interesting, because for him, there was little new.
My own interest in this book was piqued for a couple of reasons. While I was checking our library for Rubin's latest book, Better than Before, this—written well before her happiness books—popped up. Because we had recently watched the excellent Great Courses series on Churchill, I snapped it up.
My knowledge of Churchill being essentially no more than I had learned through those lectures, it was good, not tiresome, to hear the same stories again. Plus, the strength of Rubin's book is not in depth or special insight, but because she pulls together views of the man from many different biographical sources, demonstrating in the process just how difficult it is to write a biography—and impossible to write an unbiased one. In fact, the only real weakness I see in Rubin's book is that she can't hide her own great admiration for the man: she can't write the opposing side convincingly. But the facts are there, positive and negative, and I highly recommend Forty Ways as an easy-to-read introduction to this brilliant, complex man and his indomitable spirit.
The Winged Watchman by Hilda van Stockum (1962)
When I was a child our family hardly ever bought books. We were great readers—we didn't own a television set until I was seven years old—but books were too expensive to buy when the public library was free. If our tiny village library in Scotia, New York did not have what we needed, an expedition to the Schenectady city library was usually sufficient. (There was no Inter Library Loan at the time.) Imagine the glory when we moved to the Philadelphia area and I discovered that their incredible Free Library was only a train ride away.
Printed books were also (relatively) more expensive then, as this was before the explosion of available paperback books and well before the view of books as disposable items. Nonetheless, one of the great things my parents did for me was to sign me up for the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club, which periodically delivered a brand-new hardcover children's book to our door. I still have many of the books, and am surprised at the consistent, excellent quality (considering how many bad children's books are now available), even looking back from the perspective of over half a century.
One of those books was The Winged Watchman, a story of Holland during World War II. I had passed my copy on to our grandchildren, but it was recently returned because they had acquired another copy through their homeschooling curriculum. Naturally, I couldn't resist re-reading one of my childhood favorites.
The Winged Watchman is still a favorite. It's a glimpse of another culture in very difficult time, historically accurate without being depressing or overly graphic, and fits well my definition of a good book. (A good book inspires me to be a better person.)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
I don't remember when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird. Or even if I read it at all. Did I read it in school, and was it therefore in my mind consigned to the Pit as worthless? (I am an avid reader and re-reader, but no thanks to school, which utterly failed to reveal to me the good qualities of any book we were forced to read.) Did I read it after meeting Porter and learning that this is his all-time favorite book? Or did I only watch the movie? If I did read it, I know I was not impressed, because books that I find worthwhile I will read over and over again, soaking them into my very being—and I know I didn't read To Kill a Mockingbird twice.
I'm really curious: Did I make my judgement on the movie alone? Movies rarely impress me the way books can. Or was I just not psychologically ready to appreciate Harper Lee's masterpiece? The latter is possible. If I read it under Porter's influence, I would still have been very close to my school years and thus predisposed to being negative about "important" literature. More to the point, I was at that time in my life extremely prejudiced against the South, and would have had little appreciation and less sympathy for the tribulations of small-own Alabama and its people. I also had much less appreciation for good writing then than I do now.
Whatever the case, I was inspired by two recent events to give To Kill a Mockingbird another try. First, we attended a local theater presentation of the story, which was excellently done and served to reveal that I'd clearly gotten nothing out of my first experience, be it book or movie. Second, Heather was given some lavender bath salts that she had passed on to me, and I wanted to try them out. I love to read in the bath, but my current reading was on my Kindle, and the combination of electronics and bath water sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. So I pulled To Kill a Mockingbird off the bookshelf and dove into new waters—both physical and metaphorical.
It took me nearly half a century to discover it, but Porter was absolutely right: this is an astonishingly wonderful book. I knew in the first two pages that if I had ever read it before, I certainly hadn't read it. What wonderful writing! What a beautiful and important story! If I had to boil my definition of a good book down to one sentence, it would be this: A good book inspires me to be a better person. The character of Atticus Finch alone can provide a lifetime of inspiration.
C. S. Lewis once wrote that it is easy for an author to create evil characters, because he need look no further than his own heart for inspiration, but to be able to create a credible portrait of good is a rare gift. Lewis was, in that instance, praising the Scottish author George MacDonald, but I'm certain he would have said the same about Harper Lee. Atticus Finch is as inspiring a noble character as could be wished. At the same time, there is not a whit of sentimentality anywhere in the book. There is real life, hard times, hard-core racism, poverty, incest, drug addiction, mental illness ... heroism, understanding, self-sacrifice, duty, love ... above all there is grace ... all in a package that I would not hesitate to recommend to our 11-year-old grandson.
The movie version with Gregory Peck is well-known, but I wouldn't go there. Nothing less than the book could possibly do justice to the story.
For certain if I read To Kill a Mockingbird in the past it was well before homeschooling was ever on my radar. Else how could I possibly have forgotten these passages? Minor though they certainly are in the course of the story, they are nonetheless brilliant. (More)
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. This movie needs no more review than this: See it.
But of course I can't leave it at that. There are so many films, shows, books, and even Great Courses lectures I'd love for my grandchildren, especially the older ones, to experience, but there's always something that turns a great story into something NSFG. We used to be able to portray the rawer side of life in a way that left something to the imagination, but that sensitivity is now out of style. Gifted Hands, despite being non-rated, is a happy exception. There are some difficult situations and heartbreak, but nothing to detract from the story.
Ben Carson from inner-city Detroit, raised by a single mom (but what a mother!), failing in school, headed for trouble. Dr. Ben Carson, world-famous director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Gifted Hands tells the tale—fictionalized and condensed, but remarkably accurate for all that—of the transformation. The movie is enjoyable on many levels, from watching Ben's mother inspire her children to learn, to getting a glimpse of the Biltmore House library (professor's house in the movie), to realizing that it's possible to be both a top-notch neurosurgeon and a humble and good-natured person.
Great story. No caveats. Much inspiration. Enjoy!
Legally Kidnapped: The Case Against Child Protective Services by Carlos Morales (Amazon Digital Services, 2014)
Legally Kidnapped is probably good for any parent to read who either (1) has childrearing philosophies and/or practices that differ at all from the current norm, or (2) thinks they might at some point tick off a family member, friend, or neighbor. There are frightening abuses taking place under the authority of Child Protective Services (name varies by state), where vulnerable children are ripped away from their families for days, months, or years, and for no reason other than ignorance and reasonable philosophical differences. The author says, and I believe him, that "children are much more likely to be kidnapped by State workers than by strangers."
It happened here just a few months ago, basically because the mother was a vegan. A doctor friend in New York told me (without names, of course) of testifying in favor of a family whose children had been taken from them: the excuse was an infected cut, but he said the real reason was the animosity of the social worker to the family's religion. And it's not just in the United States: Germany and Sweden have separated children from their families simply because they were being educated at home. It is a problem, and Carlos Morales, a former CPS agent who knows the system from the inside, offers some helpful information to educate, inform, and assist parents who might find themselves at risk. Some of the most important: record (preferably video) all encounters and interviews, never let your children be interviewed alone, always be calm and polite.
That's the good news. Sadly, I can't really recommend the book. The author, perhaps driven by guilt because of his former complicity, is too strident and extreme. He could have used some of his own advice about being calm and polite. Also, the book is replete with basic punctuation and typographical errors, which rightly or not steal credibility from its message.
Still, if anyone wants to glean what is good, it's short (95 pages), the price is reasonable ($2.99 Kindle price on Amazon, and I got it free when they were running a special), and Amazon tells me that I can lend my Kindle copy out one time for 14 days at no charge.
I'll say more later about the extraordinary television show NCIS, which has captivated me in recent months, but can't wait for a major review to comment on yesterday's show, House Rules. This is the 12th season of NCIS, so there have been many, many episodes, and with the exception of a couple of this season's, we've seen them all. House Rules ranks as one of the all-time most beautiful. It was their Christmas show, and I don't believe I've ever seen a show that captured the basics of the holiday more effectively, efficiently, and beautifully. It's all there: law, grace, repentance, redemption, fatherly love. It's really an amazing show. The only thing that keeps me from unequivocally recommending it is that I fear that much of the effect would be lost on those who are not long-time viewers. The flashbacks and tie-ins to previous shows that are part of what makes it so powerful would seem disjointed and confusing to those without the proper background.
But I'm in awe of the writers and actors who made it happen, and glad we took time out of a busy holiday schedule to experience it.
Wool by Hugh Howey (2012)
Despite being a die-hard science fiction fan in my younger days, I rarely venture into the genre now. But I found my sister-in-law's description of Wool intriguing enough to request it from our library. And it is an intriguing story. Or, rather, set of stories, as this was an omnibus collection of Wool, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4, and Wool 5. The 532 pages slipped by quickly, though I was surprised at how dissatisfied I was. The premise is good, the characters interesting, the plot twists satisfying, and as far as I can tell the author writes well. The ending did not disappoint. So why the dissatisfaction?
Perhaps because it was just a bit too gritty for me. I enjoyed the first book most, and thought that perhaps our oldest grandchild might like it. But it seems as if the author's critics told him after each book that he needed more profanity, gore, and action scenes. True, it all fits into the story, but made it much less pleasant to read. (Though it did remind me of one reason I prefer books to movies—it's a lot easier to skim through the fighting.)
My dislike of violence and profanity does not mean I like insipid books. I've read plenty of squeaky-clean books that left me feeling as dissatisfied as Wool. I prefer a book, like The Lord of the Rings (NOT the movie) where the paragraphs are a delight to read and the complexity and depth stand up to multiple re-readings.
I believe my dissatisfaction came because my strongest and most important criterion for enjoyment of a book, play, movie, or television show is whether or not the experience leaves me wanting to be a better person. It doesn't have to be super-spiritual, but I want to be inspired to be kinder, to be more clever, to make our home more inviting, or even just to run a little faster—but to be better in some way. Wool left me feeling that I had read an interesting tale, but nothing more.
The ending cleverly left room for many more books in the same setting, and there are at least four more available, though not at our library. If, someday, the library chooses to add them, and if I'm in the mood for something merely relaxing, I may return to the story: there are a few characters I'd like to follow further....
Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It by Jennifer Fulwiler (Ignatius, 2014)
I've been a fan of Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary blog since it was called Et tu?, which takes me back at least as far as 2008. Granted, like Free-Range Kids and the Front Porch Republic, it has gotten short shrift in the last year or so simply because I like it so much: not only was I spending a lot of time reading (which I could have managed) but it too often inspired me to spend much more time writing (which I couldn't). I long to get back to these excellent blogs again, but only after I've acquired more control over responsibilities closer to home.
Be that as it may, when I discovered that our library now has copies of Something Other Than God, I grabbed it, all other responsibilities notwithstanding. Having followed the conception, gestation, long-and-agonizing labor, and finally birth of this book, how could I not? Okay, a real fan would have bought a copy, rather than waiting for the library, but if possible I like to know what I think of a book before I spend money on it.
This one is well worth spending money on, if you can't borrow a copy. (Heather, the Concord library has it.) Jen writes really well, even without an editor, and if I can perhaps detect a little heavy-handedness on the part of that editor ("you need more adjectives"), I can still say with assurance that the agonizing re-re-re-writing process resulted in a well-told, powerful, and entertaining story. My current Kindle-read was set aside once I opened the book, and I finished it two days later—it would have been sooner had I not had some discipline to avoid seriously compromising my other responsibilities. It's a compelling story, serious and funny, and seriously fun to read.
Something Other Than God takes its title from C.S. Lewis, who wrote: All that we call human history ... [is] the long, terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. Jen's journey from fire-breathing atheist to devout Catholic is not only for people who appreciate conversion stories; even those who are certain the pilgrimage took her and her husband in the wrong direction can appreciate the humor and the sheer humanness of the story.
The back-cover endorsement written by Gretchen Rubin (author of The Happiness Project) says it well: Thought-provoking, honest, and often hilarious. It will strike a chord with anyone who ever posed—or tried unsuccessfully to avoid—the big questions of life.
But those who are familiar with Jen's blog will be disappointed to learn that there is no scorpion story. Not one.
Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life by Jane Pauley (Simon & Schuster, 2014)
This is why we have friends. I would never have picked out this book to read. For one thing, I tend to avoid books by or about celebrities. For another, I in no way can identify with people who, when their children go to school, or leave home, or when they turn 50, or retire, say, "What on earth am I going to do with the rest of my life?" I don't need a new life; I have enough planned in the one I have now to see me through more productive years than I can possibly have left.
But a friend highly recommended Pauley's book, and I'll admit that it kept my interest even though I didn't buy into its focus. The Penzey's fans among my readers will best understand the effect that Your Life Calling had on me. It was very much like reading a Penzey's catalog, where I find myself repeatedly annoyed by the self-aggrandizement, the leftist slant, and the in-your-face distain for several of my strongly-held principles—yet I keep reading, because the stories are interesting and inspiring.
Pauley premise is that our generation is the first to have the long lifespan and the leisure to "reinvent" ourselves, possibly several times as we go through life. Today's young people are already doing it ("what we call reinvention is just 'the churn' for them"). In fact, for them it may be more of a necessity, given the pace at which technology (and thus the job market) is now changing. (The last sentence is my analysis, not Pauley's.) But it's new for us.
You may be surprised to know that people over fifty-five represent the largest age group of owners of new business start-ups. At an age when our own parents and grandparents expected to wind things down, people are getting a second wind.
The Stanford Longevity expert, Laura Carstensen, notes that withour new vitality come some pretty big questions. She says, "Those of us living today have been handed a remarkable gift with no strings attached—an extra thirty years of life for the average person. Now that gift is forcing us to answer a uniquely twenty-first-century question—what are we going to do with our supersized lives?"
Permit me an exasperated wail at yet another expert who misunderstands the term "life expectancy." But aside from that, it is true that our generation finds itself thinking in terms of second, often radically different, careers more than previous generations. One only needs to listen to someone of my parents' generation talk to realize that the men, at least, defined themselves very much by their careers. Of my generation this is less true, mostly I think because we were betrayed by the "be loyal to your company and your company will be loyal to you" compact. What is "me" is not my employment, and therefore I am free to move on to something entirely different.
That I get, as evidenced by my need to elaborate on it. I also appreciated Pauley's description of Imposter Syndrome: (More)
The Brainy Bunch by Kip and Mona Lisa Harding (Gallery Books, 2014)
Facebook, like smartphones, can enslave or empower. Or both at once. At the moment I'm feeling grateful to Facebook, and the friend who posted a link that eventually led me to this Today Show feature about the Harding family and their book.
As most of you know, education has long been my passion, particularly the education of young children, and most especially my belief that most children can learn and do so very much more than we give them the opportunity to achieve. It will thus come as no surprise that when I heard of a family where seven (so far!) of the children had gone to to college by the time they were twelve years old, I immediately ordered the book from our library, and finished reading it the day after I picked it up. If read with an open mind, this is a book that can blow away a number of stereotypes and presuppositions, and not just about education.
Although a large number of homeschoolers are Christians, including many who have spectacular records both academically and socially, as the movement has grown there have slso been examples of less-than-stellar achievement, especially in academics. It is unfortunate that when many people think of "Christian homeschoolers," it is the latter example that comes to mind. The Harding family is a stunning counterexample, especially since The Brainy Bunch bristles with buzzwords that set off alarm bells: Mary Pride, A Full Quiver, Josh Harris, early marriage, Michael and Debi Pearl (at least they label the Pearls' book "a bit legalistic"), creationism, the Duggar Family, and others that might send some running for the hills. But hang on—they also mention John Taylor Gatto, Raymond and Dorothy Moore, unschooling, and the Colfaxes, quite on the opposite end of the spectrum (inexplicably leaving out John Holt, however). Mona Lisa and Kip sound like people after my own heart, able to take the best from many sources and leave aside what doesn't work for them. In any case, the family deals a clean blow to many prejudices, including that of the college student who once told them, "Children in big families have low IQs."
The Hardings insist, however, that their IQs are strictly average; their children are not geniuses. This bothered me at first, as it seemed almost a reverse boast, as if there were something wrong with being smart. But I think I know why they make this point, and it's important. There are a surprising number of people who have gone to college at an extremely young age (here's a list of the ten youngest), but they are generally prodigies with super-high IQs and extraordinary skills. This does nothing to encourage most families to believe that early college entrance is possible for their children. Or desirable. Despite its title, The Brainy Bunch shows that this higher-level work is well within the grasp of the average student, and why this is a good idea.
Some might even say the Hardings started out as a below-average family, or at least one with several strikes against it when it came to predicting their children's academic success. Kip and Mona Lisa were high school sweethearts who married in their teens. After high school, he went into the military and she started having babies. Lots of babies. Their life was not easy, requiring many moves, and times of great financial hardship. And yet here they are, with their children not only college graduates but successful at a young age in many fields: engineering, architecture, medicine, music, and more. (More)
