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Longer Flight: A Family Grows Up with Books
Lovely one woman's passionate commitment to share the love of books with her children. Nice ideas, and a tender feeling about books permeates the book.
269 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1955
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 16, 2020
Another excellent offering from Annis Duff, much in the same vein as Bequest of Wings, but slightly later in life and her children's development. Standout chapters on "the classics," adolescent reading, parental pressure persuasion to read favorites, poetry, and more make up a very enjoyable book about family reading.
Unsurprisingly, the chapter about which I feel most conflicted was on reading the Bible. Much of it I wholeheartedly agree with: don't use the stories moralistically or allegorically, don't lose the context of the original audience, enjoy the imaginative expanse of poetry, apocalypse, and prophecy with children in addition to the stories. I didn't enjoy some of the ideas: some books aren't even worth reading by adults, a paternalistic belief that all religions are the same. This is one chapter where the context of writing (1948) is particularly felt, as a sample of Protestant liberalism, not to be confused with any sort of theological "liberalism" today. While it didn't decrease my overall enjoyment of the book, it was the one in which I felt the most cognitive dissonance, which had the overall effect of giving me good food for thought about how to introduce children to the Scriptures. Reading this while I was reading Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book, especially the chapter on how he began writing The Message, yielded interesting talking points. Peterson's love for the Scriptures is contagious and life-bringing. The story of the Septuagint was never so alive to me. Duff's cautious appreciation for the language of the King James is not nearly so inviting, but all the same, good ideas live here.
"Reading and its ramifications--learning, thinking, talking, looking, listening--constitute for us what I should think every family must have for stability and encouragement, a field of successfulness...Every once in a while I am mortified to realize that by comparison, with what there is to read, we and our children have read nothing, absolutely nothing. But then I remember that it is better for people to savor and assimilate than to gulp and forget, and I can relax in the confidence that whatever we have not read, the books we know are ours to keep forever." (13)
"I believe with all my heart that young people who are helped by every possible means to understand themselves and other people, and so to become all they are capable of becoming, will somehow find a decent future. They will be secure within themselves. I know that books have helped us in countless ways to amplify and consolidate the values we have tried to establish for our children, and that is why, when I talk about books and children, optimism shines through." (14)
"Reading provides the only way I know of by which children can see the whole view of how people who are in earnest about it grow slowly but surely into the habit of right conduct; how this becomes the very basis of personal stability, durable friendship, and responsible participation in human affairs; and how it brings the blessing of inner peace." (20-21)
"But this I know, deep in my bones: that every good book, read at the time purely for the fun of it, adds something to a child's readiness for life and expands the reach of his imaginative understanding." (22-23)
[on museums] "It is a good thing to know that beauty itself can never be possessed by one person alone, but lives and grows in the affections of those to whom it speaks." (100)
"It is this capacity for living abundantly, it seems to me, that makes a child able to accept and use books not as a substitute for something else, but for what they actually are: first and foremost and always, a never-failing wellspring of delight; experience, imaginative and intellectual; a basis for companionship; and an augmentation and enrichment of active experience." (207-208)
Unsurprisingly, the chapter about which I feel most conflicted was on reading the Bible. Much of it I wholeheartedly agree with: don't use the stories moralistically or allegorically, don't lose the context of the original audience, enjoy the imaginative expanse of poetry, apocalypse, and prophecy with children in addition to the stories. I didn't enjoy some of the ideas: some books aren't even worth reading by adults, a paternalistic belief that all religions are the same. This is one chapter where the context of writing (1948) is particularly felt, as a sample of Protestant liberalism, not to be confused with any sort of theological "liberalism" today. While it didn't decrease my overall enjoyment of the book, it was the one in which I felt the most cognitive dissonance, which had the overall effect of giving me good food for thought about how to introduce children to the Scriptures. Reading this while I was reading Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book, especially the chapter on how he began writing The Message, yielded interesting talking points. Peterson's love for the Scriptures is contagious and life-bringing. The story of the Septuagint was never so alive to me. Duff's cautious appreciation for the language of the King James is not nearly so inviting, but all the same, good ideas live here.
"Reading and its ramifications--learning, thinking, talking, looking, listening--constitute for us what I should think every family must have for stability and encouragement, a field of successfulness...Every once in a while I am mortified to realize that by comparison, with what there is to read, we and our children have read nothing, absolutely nothing. But then I remember that it is better for people to savor and assimilate than to gulp and forget, and I can relax in the confidence that whatever we have not read, the books we know are ours to keep forever." (13)
"I believe with all my heart that young people who are helped by every possible means to understand themselves and other people, and so to become all they are capable of becoming, will somehow find a decent future. They will be secure within themselves. I know that books have helped us in countless ways to amplify and consolidate the values we have tried to establish for our children, and that is why, when I talk about books and children, optimism shines through." (14)
"Reading provides the only way I know of by which children can see the whole view of how people who are in earnest about it grow slowly but surely into the habit of right conduct; how this becomes the very basis of personal stability, durable friendship, and responsible participation in human affairs; and how it brings the blessing of inner peace." (20-21)
"But this I know, deep in my bones: that every good book, read at the time purely for the fun of it, adds something to a child's readiness for life and expands the reach of his imaginative understanding." (22-23)
[on museums] "It is a good thing to know that beauty itself can never be possessed by one person alone, but lives and grows in the affections of those to whom it speaks." (100)
"It is this capacity for living abundantly, it seems to me, that makes a child able to accept and use books not as a substitute for something else, but for what they actually are: first and foremost and always, a never-failing wellspring of delight; experience, imaginative and intellectual; a basis for companionship; and an augmentation and enrichment of active experience." (207-208)
August 30, 2022
A lovely book about books.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews