Bookish Beauty

In celebration of our upcoming conference (in person and broadcast online) centered around Literature and the Humanities in a Charlotte Mason education, this month’s collage of resources and inspiration revolves around books – art featuring books, music inspired by books, books about books, book art, and more. Enjoy these activities and opportunities to see and enjoy more around you – for yourself and/or your students.

View

Pick one of these bookish paintings to enjoy–or pick a few and discuss the different ways books have featured in various pieces of art in different places and times.

Read

“I Like a Book” by M. Lucille Ford and “Upon First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats. Be sure to read the poems aloud a few times. What images do the words create in your mind? What experiences or ideas do they make you think of? Note: “Chapman” whom Keats refers to in his poem translated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Observe

Reading a book and observing nature are two sides of the same coin. Language plays a key role in helping us make sense of the world and vice versa. Take a nature walk and pick something to focus on more deeply. Write about it in your nature journal–describe it with as much detail as possible. What do the colors, the textures, the setting, etc. remind you of? What things do you wonder about it?

Listen

“The Alcotts” from the Concord Sonata by Charles Ives

Create

Experiment with book folding as a handicraft this summer. What better way to repurpose twaddle?

Share

What inspired you?

A Few Favorite Books about Books

Selections for all ages

• Inside Outside Book of Libraries‍
• ‍Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library‍
• ‍Marguerite Makes a Book‍
• ‍Andy and the Lion
• ‍‍This is Sadie
• ‍‍The Library‍
• ‍Amber on the Mountain
• ‍‍Least of All‍
• ‍Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia‍
• ‍The Bee Tree‍
• ‍In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible
• ‍‍The Book on the Bookshelf‍
• ‍Steeped in Stories‍
• ‍84, Charring Cross
• ‍‍The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society‍
• ‍Parnassus on Wheels‍
• ‍Fahrenheit 451‍
• ‍The Wonderful O