What They're Reading at the Kitchen Table

[Kire]

What They're Reading at the Kitchen Table
Home-schoolers of all stripes find common ground in some good, old-fashioned books.

BY MARK OPPENHEIMER
Friday, September 2, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Home-schooling is sort of like a college student's virginity: People figure it's a mark of religiosity, but nearly as often it's just personal taste, or a lack of better options. The majority of families who home-school are conservative Christians, to be sure. But another sizable portion are secular counterculturalists, and then there are the diplomats, foreign-aid workers or those living in the desert or Alaskan wilderness--anyone far from a school. Home-schoolers put their numbers at about two million, the federal government guesses closer to one million, but everyone agrees that the number is growing by 5% to 15% a year.

All of which means that there are millions of parents buying books for their children's kitchen-table schooling. And while many of these moms and dads are assigning their children books that would be familiar to school kids anywhere, many are not. A new class of best sellers has arisen--mainly old books, given new life by the Internet, specialty bookstores, librarians and word of mouth. There is no one book they all read, but each camp has its favorites, and some have crossover appeal.

Conservative Christians, for example, have flocked to the Elsie Dinsmore books, by Martha Finley, 28 novels that sold millions when they were published between 1867 and 1905. The books tell the life story of Elsie, a Louisiana heiress whose mother dies in childbirth, leaving Elsie to be raised by an irreligious father. Fortunately, a black nurse reads the Bible with Elsie, and she grows into an exemplar of Christian virtue from motherhood to widowhood and all the way into her dotage. Vision Forum, a Christian ministry whose book catalog is sent to many home-schoolers, has sold more than 100,000 Elsie Dinsmore volumes.

More: http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007199