Fri 3 Oct 2008 - CM Pinoy: Living and whole books for the Filipino child
Photo by Iphis, morguefile.com
Charlotte Mason emphasized the use of living and whole books in teaching children. A book written in a rich language with high literary value may be considered a living book. It is usually written by adults who have passion and keen love for the subject or theme of the book, be it fiction or non-fiction. Whole books are unabridged stories, usually classics and awarded literary works published wholly and not in snippets like anthologies and dry textbooks.
When we started using living and whole books, I slowly built our collection starting with the literary classics which are available in the local bookstores. This include Jules Verne, Laura Ingalls Wilder, CS Lewis, Tolkien, Rudyard Kipling, G.A. Henty, E. Nesbit, C. Kingsley, L.M. Montgomery and more. These books are easy to find. They can be ordered online or downloaded free from Project Gutenberg, Archive.org and other public domain libraries in pdf or djvu format.
Back home, our favorite places to hunt for living book treasures are second hand shops, BookSale and Diplomat's Book and Mags, for the budget-tight biblioholics. My children and I literally spent hours in the afternoon digging up shelves and boxes of these shops. We completed our Little House books set by Laura Wilder Ingalls through BookSale at prices P30-75 (Philippine peso) only, when a book would cost P250 in the bookstore. I marked regular new-arrival dates on my calendar and left my contact details so they can call me if new books were delivered. Local living books are elusive since it hasn't gained a market niche especially those which reflect Philippine history and culture but they are not non-existent. Some titles are just available online for the foreign market but not in our regular bookstores - sounds weird, huh? Perhaps, if more Filipino families homeschool the CM way, it will steadily gain a following 'til writers and publishers will note us worthy of pampering. =)
Well, I wouldn't discount the growing number of lively, colorful bilingual storybooks published by Tahanan, Adarna House, Hiyas and Lampara among many others but we still need more of various subjects especially for the older children. In the recent Manila International Book fair, more books written by our very own writers were launched. Yet, we need more. If you are a homeschool parent yourself, you would have known this by now, we can never satiate the minds and hearts of our young readers who are always hungry for good books.
I have come up with a reading list and sources of living books for the Filipino homeschooled child. It is just a bit frustrating that many titles are not available in our local bookstores and have to be ordered online (dollars!) - the Filipino homeschool community should make an appeal about this.
Next week: List of Philippine Publishers and Living Books for the Filipino Child |
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Sun 12 Oct 2008 - filipino living books
Edited by PinayMom on Sat 11 Oct 2008 at 9:54 PM