We have an enormous amount of children's books. It had gotten completely out of hand. We probably read the same 10-15 books at bedtime, yet the house was just crawling with books. So this week I had the kids bring every kids book in the house into the big room. This was the result.
It was very scary. I never did count them all but there were definitely multiple hundred. We managed to find about 2 dozen duplicates that we quickly donated to a book drive the 4th graders were having at our school. We gave away another 20-30 to friends who just had a baby. We then sorted through the rest and found about another 50-75 we could let go to Goodwill. I swear we had 20+ Clifford books. And don't get me started on Elmo. There had to be at least 30. Other big groups - holiday books, my little pony books, and of course the chapter series (Magic Treehouse, Junie B Jones). We have now at least culled through them and tried to put them in some groupings - chapter books vs easy readers, etc. We decided putting any of them down in the playroom was silly because we never read down there. So all the books are now in the kids rooms or on the main level (mostly in the big room, some in the front room).
I feel better that we at least went through them all. Of course, a few hours later I pre-ordered the new Fancy Nancy book - so this will be a continuous problem in our house!
4 comments:
I was working at the fall book fair where one of the Kindergarten teachers said "You can never have enough books." I respectfully disagreed based on what we have in our house (despite frequent donations to the gently used book drive). But you definitely beat me!
sadly most of ours are computer textbooks.
to add anouther book to the pile (but at least this one's for you)you should check out meredith o'brien's websites (http://www.wickedlocalparents.com/picketfencepost/) and pick up her book "A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum" (http://www.amazon.com/A-Suburban-Mom-Meredith-OBrien/dp/1932279512). It's a great read.
We have a huge pile, too, from 11 years of home schooling with literature-based curricula. You never can tell what books are going to be the faves of the next kid, so we only get rid of books that *no one* liked.
One kid went through an Encyclopedia Brown phase, another is the the throes of Beverly Cleary-addiction. And E., the budding reader, is zipping through joke books like no tomorrow.
*Everyone* has loved the non-fiction books by Joy Wilt Berry. They are straight-forward but funnily-illustrated and winsome doses of emotional intelligence. I think they are a must for every kid, but they've been especially helpful for our Aspergian child. They helped him decode social interactions even before we realized he needed the help.
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