On Children's Literature
Ryan O’Connor
Founder & President - Highlight Catholic Ministries
Editor’s Note: This article was originally distributed by Highlight Catholic Ministries on May 18th, 2020, and is presented here with the generous permission of Ryan O’Connor.
As the quarantine continues and youth sports remain on hold, I thought we'd share some thoughts on forming culture in your home through children's literature...
I’ll never forget driving home from the hospital with our first baby. I suddenly became the safest driver in the history of the world. White knuckle driving with hands at 10 and 2. No speeding. Tailgating? Not even close. A protective instinct I never knew existed exploded with full force. Before John Paul was even mobile, child-proof locks were put on cabinets, gates installed at the top and bottom of stairs, and DVD movies and iTunes songs with bad language were trashed. And shortly thereafter the TV itself was removed from our house!
To further beef up my security skills, I got my hands on A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child’s Mind by Michael O’Brien. The book warns parents of the pagan invasion of children’s literature. One particular section profoundly impacted the way my wife and I have approached everything from picking books to celebrating feast days (to founding sports ministries, more on that later!):
"We cannot assume that we will be immune to the massive apostasy that is taking place in the Western world. Never in human history has there been such a wholesale loss of faith, nor one that has come about with such startling speed. Much of its momentum is due to the unprecedented power of television, film, and video—of the image—to recreate our understanding of the very shape of reality. Thus, large numbers of Christians simply do not realize that they are apostatizing, and still larger numbers do not understand that they are being prepared mentally to follow. This is the power of impressionism; it is also 'peer pressure' on a colossal scale. How very difficult it is to resist an entire culture, and especially for children to do so, because it is a right and good thing for children to grow into awareness of being members of a broader community. They need culture in order to grow properly. It is one of their primary means of learning what it is to be a fully human person in a community of fellow human beings. That is why the solution will never be simply a matter of criticizing the false culture surrounding us. The absolutely essential task of parents is to give their children a true culture, a sure foundation on which to stand."
Solid children’s literature is one way we can give our children a “true culture,” and reading books, many of which I missed out on as a kid, has been one of the biggest unexpected joys of fatherhood for me. After reading the classic Chronicles of Narnia 7-book series to my two oldest, they have listened to the audio versions 5-10 times, depending on the book. I am often amazed at how this story has helped shaped the souls of our boys. Now we are on our second read-aloud of Narnia, which feels a bit like assimilating our third son into our family culture, and to see it afresh through the eyes of a 5-year-old is a beautiful thing to behold. The other night my wife warned the kids not to play with their silverware by saying, “They’re not toys!” Our three oldest quickly responded in unison, “They are tools, not toys,” in reference to the warning of Narnia’s “Father Christmas” while giving presents to Peter, Susan, and Lucy.
An excerpt from a book I recently finished reading (A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction by Christopher Blum and Joshua Hochschild) helps explain why I see almost daily evidence of our boys viewing the world through the lens of Narnia.
“We sometimes think that memory takes effort to employ, but the fact is that we are memorizing all the time. The question is not whether we will remember things, but which things we will remember… if you spend a lot of free time watching The Office, every new experience will remind you of some stupid joke by Michael Scott. If, however, you spend more free time meditating on the psalms, your mind will more easily connect its present experience with Divine Wisdom. This is why Plato placed so much emphasis on supervising the music and poems that young people would hear, because he knew that their minds, their affections, and their capacities for belief would be formed by whatever powerful stories took root in their memories.”
Another must-read for Catholic families is The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings series of course. The brilliant audio version read by Rob Inglis has accompanied us during many hours of I-80 driving between here and Illinois. “Moral imagination” is a common phrase used in classical education circles, and I never quite understood what it meant until one day when my wife pulled John Paul aside to discuss his selfish behavior with his brothers. “What’s going on today? Do you think you could work on being more selfless? Do you know what selfless means?” After a pause and a sigh, John Paul lamented, “I’m no Sam Gamgee.” In other words, yes, he does understand, thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien.
There’s only one other series that belongs on the top shelf of foundational culture-forming books for our family. In 2017, my wife started raving about this new book she was listening to with the boys in the van about these rabbits with swords. Being skeptical of any new literature, I reluctantly agreed to give it a listen with the boys during our mountain drives to ski. This led to listening on my own during my drives to school, which led to sitting in the parking lot, late for work because I just had to find out what happened during the climax of this epic battle between rabbits and wolves (a moment John Paul calls “the greatest in the history of literature”). Three years later, having listened to the audio of the first three books for a third time in preparation, the preordered Book IV of The Green Ember series arrived on our doorstop as a true act of Lenten self-mortification for my wife and me, as we forced ourselves to leave it unopened until our Kolbe’s birthday on March 13, just in time, as it turned out, for a thrilling addition to quarantine downtime. Tempted to read it aloud all in one weekend, we limited ourselves to two chapters a day in order to stretch the enjoyment into the Easter Octave. While reading the climactic chapter, my oldest three boys and I locked arms out of giddy excitement and anticipation. And after reading the end, all we could do is sit still in silence for a minute, pondering the profound truth, beauty, and goodness we had encountered.
Yes, fictional fantasies, which include other worlds, magical rings, and rabbits with swords, are true stories. As Green Ember author S.D. Smith writes, good stories are “infused with echoes of that deep Reality.” Also, “we love to make believe, and we make believe about what we love.” May these powerful stories take root in our children’s memories as a sure cultural foundation, forming their capacities of belief, and igniting love for The Truth Incarnate and the courage to follow Him.
To Jesus through literature!
P.S. You can currently get all 4 Green Ember books, plus the 4 “side story” books, for $70 at sdsmith.com. Then please help me settle the ongoing debate at my house, “Who would win an archery contest between Susan Pevensie, Legolas, and Jo Shanks?”
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