A few years ago, my wife taught our oldest child to read. As parents, we were entering a newstage of life where we no longer had total control over the stories that would be told to ourchildren. We would take our kids to the local public library and let them pick out whatever bookspiqued their interests. As we surveyed their selections, we were less than delighted to consistently see the likes of My Little Pony, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Ninjago. Notably absent was any book that might increase their understanding of the world around them. It was as though we were letting our children order their own food at a restaurant. I’m not sure why we were surprised when they consistently chose the literary equivalent of junk food.
It didn’t take long for us to conclude that if we wanted our children to learn to love goodliterature, we were going to have to hand pick the books they would read. We knew the danger of taking our children to the public library and selecting only the good books. Our children would feel as though we wouldn’t let them have the “fun books,” and they’d be predisposed to dislike what we ended up checking out. Most good children’s literature doesn’t offer immediate appealto children. It doesn’t sparkle.
So we resolved to cease our public library visits and to begin filling the shelves of our home withused copies of good books. This, of course, required us to research which books we should purchase. Around this time I read The Death of Christian Cultureby John Senior, a work of hard-hitting cultural criticism. In an appendix he included what he termed The Thousand Good Books. This list was divided into age ranges and contained works that he considered to bepreparatory for the virtuous life. They would properly form what Edmund Burke called the moral imagination and predispose students to be able tolead virtuous lives.
So we began ordering books that were on his list (which can be viewed) and reading themtogether. We started with works like Aesop’s Fables, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, andclassics like Black Beauty and Swiss Family Robinson. We began a family tradition of putting ona pot of tea, lighting the fireplace, and gathering in the living room for family reading. We felt likewe had discovered a hidden treasure.
In the meantime, some friends of ours continued using the public library and were alarmed todiscover books in the children’s section which were grossly inappropriate for young readers. They were obviously written by activists who wanted to convince young children to be warriorsof leftist causes. A quick lookup of the library’s recent purchase history revealed that this wasthe majority of what was being acquired. It only takes a few minutes of internet research todiscover that the librarian profession as a whole now consists of Marxists who want to use librarianship as a tool to spread the progressive liberal agenda. As we began to publicly protestthis institutional drift, many other local homeschooling families found themselves no longertrusting the public library and thus without a trustworthy source for good children’s literature.
We considered loaning our meager collection to our friends, but we knew that wouldn’t be ableto fill the literary needs of multiple families for very long. So I once again turned to the internet tosee what others had done in this scenario. As providence would have it, I discovered the Biblioguides website and their list of “private lending libraries.” It was a short leap from there tothe Plumfield Moms podcast, Michelle Howard, and the League of Lending Librarians Facebook group. From these resources, we’ve been able to learn how others in the same situation have managed to fill their homes with good books and loan them to other families.
We began entering our books into LibraryThing in January of 2024, and by August, we conducted a soft opening of sorts by recruiting our friends to take part in a pilot program. The pilot group’s mission was to check out books, read them, return them, and give us all the feed back. It helped us work out any kinks before inviting paying patrons to join. The pilot group ran from August 2024 to December 2024, and we learned a lot from that whole process. It wasa perfect fit for us. The pilot program members were given free access to the online catalogue inexchange for their suggestions, comments, and critiques. It was very low-pressure, and enabledus to hone in on some weak points and make everything as smooth as we could beforeopening.
When we officially launched on January 1, 2025, several families joined as patrons, and wehave enjoyed every minute of it. We offer “librarian’s choice,” which consists of our family picking out books that we think each patron family will like. Not all of our families do this, but those who do say they love the surprise each week and have found gems that they might have passed over otherwise. Our size also allows us to have a personal touch with our members by working with them and their individual schooling needs. We live in a downtown area, which makes front porch pick up and drop off a little easier. We place all books inside a tote (with our logo on it) and set it on the porch or we deliver books to our patrons who take part in a local homeschool co-op. They place their totes full of books in a bin in the morning, and by the time co-op is finished, we have replaced their returns with fresh books for the week.
In the summer of 2025, we plan on adding in-house browsing and possibly a book club orprogram of some sort. I haven’t quite figured that one out. Before that happens, we need to continue converting a certain room in our house into the official library. Right now, it’s also ouroffice. So we’ve got our work cut out for us. It’s all good fun!
Honestly, the absolute BEST part of all of this is the amount of reading our children are doing because of opening a private lending library. It is such a joy watching them run into the library before bedtime, selecting their books for the night, and tucking them (and their books) into bed. Our family culture has now become book reading. And we love it! Our oldest loves to write her own stories, and we can see her characters resembling those of the books she has read. These are the stories that will shape your child’s imagination, so try to choose them well! This is what we want to offer to other families: the opportunity to grow and be shaped by the very best books. All children should have this!