In a world where fast-paced, shiny new releases are clamoring for a place in your homeschool library, do vintage books still have something left to offer? In today’s guest post, author Courtenay Burden shares five ways vintage books can enrich your homeschool—plus one way they definitely can’t.
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They’re old. They’re musty. They’ve got big, hard words—complicated sentences—and outdated paradigms.
You put them on the front table at your garage sale, and at seven o’clock in the evening they’re still hanging around with the last cracked kitchen gadgets and the pile of ‘90s jigsaw puzzles for your husband to haul to the dump.
Who even reads old books?
In a world where an avalanche of fast-paced, shiny new releases are clamouring for a place on your TBR list and in your homeschool library, do vintage books still have something left to offer?
I may be in the minority on this one, but my answer is a resounding YES!
Today, I’m excited to share with you five ways vintage books can enrich your homeschool—along with one way they really can’t.
Vintage Books Build Language Skills
What do SpongeBob SquarePants, The Little Engine That Could and A Midsummer Night’s Dream all have in common?
Beyond the obvious trifle that all three of them sport dialogue between imaginative creatures we don’t usually meet in real life . . .
You’re right—they’re all written in English!
So exactly what is it that makes us cringe at the idea of SpongeBob and Shakespeare sharing a common tongue? Does it have something to do with the way that tongue is being used? One of the greatest benefits of vintage books is the rich language and sentence structure they tend to showcase. Yes, historic literature and modern literature come to us in the same language—but vintage books tend to do more to build that language, familiarizing readers with a broader vocabulary and stretching comprehension levels with more complex grammar than their typical modern counterparts.
There’s no time like childhood for assimilating language. Incorporating vintage books into your homeschool is a fantastic way to develop your child’s English skills on a multitude of levels.
Vintage Books Foster a Love of History
History is the stereotypical student-hated, dry-and-boring subject.
Unless you’re the student who’s grown up on vintage books!
Over and over again we see this phenomenon of homeschoolers connecting to history in a way that public school students do not. Part of this, I think, can be attributed to a clearer focus on exploring culture and narrative rather than on memorizing names and dates. But there’s no question that another big factor comes from homeschoolers’ greater enthusiasm for incorporating historical fiction into the history curriculum.
And what better place to look for that fiction than in the books that were being written in the very same era as the events they describe?
Most of the history buffs I know are also avid vintage book fans. Give your students the best chance at history. Give them vintage books.
Vintage Books Introduce a Primary Source Experience
This goes hand in hand with the previous topic, but it’s valuable enough to deserve a section of its own. Vintage books connect students to the richest and most foundational of all historical resources—primary source narratives.
Primary sources are first-hand accounts of events or experiences. If I personally witnessed the JFK assassination (which incidentally, I did not!) then my description of the events of November 22, 1963, would be considered a primary source. If, on the other hand, I was born multiple decades later, and happen to be so squeamish about violence that I have never even watched the video footage—then any writing I may produce on the subject is going to be a secondary source document at best. I would need to rely on the accounts of firsthand (or maybe second- or thirdhand) witnesses to compile my narrative. In consequence, my account could be significantly biased by the perspective of the sources I’ve relied on—possibly without my even being aware of it.
By familiarizing our students with primary source vintage books we teach them to eliminate these ideological middlemen and the subconscious biases that go along with secondary and tertiary sources.
Vintage Books Encourage Interactive Entertainment
We live in an age of passive entertainment. We sit in front of screens. We slip in earbuds. We scroll social media feeds. We experience entertainment without participating in it.
And in a subtle way, this passivity is robbing us of one of the key elements of entertainment through the ages—the engagement of imagination.
Vivid, well-written literature offers an immersive experience that relies on instead of sidelining this fundamental human function. To be entertained by a movie, we only need to show up. (And find an appropriate volume level for everyone in the room—I get it, there’s creative problem-solving involved in movie night, too!)
Vintage books provide part of the entertainment experience, but they rely on the reader to supply the missing half. Visualization, imagination, the ability to fill in the picture with the flash of details from our own brain and heart—this is what engages the reader in the story, moving them from a passive spectator to an active participant.
It’s more than just a break from eye-straining blue light. Vintage books develop your student’s appetite for a mentally active, instead of a mentally passive, experience of life.
Vintage Books Introduce New Worldviews
Exploring worldviews can be a controversial subject. In an age that increasingly pressures Christians to equate love and acceptance with relativism and a lack of spiritual boundaries, it can be easy to shy away from the concept of intentionally exposing ourselves to worldviews that differ from our own.
And yet—I say it as a kid who had experienced not one but two voluntary cultural shifts before her twenty-first birthday—new worldviews will do something for your critical thinking skills and your empathy levels that is hard to simulate in any other way.
Experiencing different worldviews does make us bigger people.
So how can you give your child this experience—without communicating the message that all worldviews are morally equal?
My answer comes back (surprise, surprise!) to vintage books. Not just every culture but every generation has its own unique worldview. This means that while 21st century Christians share many key components with the worldview of past ages, many aspects of our worldview are also very different.
By exposing our students to the perspective of vintage books we are handing them an incredible treasure—the opportunity to explore the ways in which the worldviews of the past differ from their own.
What Vintage Books CAN’T Do for Your Homeschool
This may come as a jolt after the subject we just discussed—but there is one area in which I strongly believe vintage books will never be able to contribute to your homeschool.
Vintage books will never give you access to a “better world.”
There is a deeply rooted tendency for those of us who value the past to let ourselves create a rose-tinted picture of the “good old days” when the world was a better and happier place than it is now. Nowhere does this fantasy develop more easily than in the lover of vintage books.
I mean—come on! 1860s Victorian culture? That’s hard to beat!
Still, as wholeheartedly as I love the writers of past ages, and as precious as I believe their contribution to be, I do not believe that they lived in a perfect world. In fact, I believe they lived in a messy, violent, self-absorbed, unrighteous generation, just like we do today.
The good news is, in the midst of that messy, violent, self-absorbed, unrighteous age—as vintage books let us know—God’s church was still alive and fighting.
In fact, it was more than alive and fighting. It was alive and winning.
Just like His church, today.
Vintage Books Are Worth It!
Dust, must, long-winded, long-worded paragraphs and all, vintage books are worth a place in your homeschool.
And the good news is—they’re out there just waiting to be discovered! If you’re looking for a place to start, check out my list of Top Ten Vintage Reprints.
And where do 21st century authors fit into the scheme of vintage books?
As an author and publisher of both historical and contemporary fiction, I believe passionately that well-written literature that builds positive language skills, fosters a love of history, validates primary sources, encourages active reader participation, and explores God-honouring worldviews can and does exist in the 21st century.
If you’re curious to learn more, you can sign up for my newsletter right below to receive a totally FREE sample chapter from three of our most popular books.
What are some favourite vintage titles you’ve already incorporated into your homeschool? I’d love to hear your book recs in the comments section below!
Courtenay Burden is a homeschool graduate, Victorian fanatic, author, and co-founder of Sheep Among Wolves Publishing. She loves working with yarn, playing the occasional game of chess, devouring history, and discovering new ways to cook the humble potato. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her painting, reading anything published more than a century ago, or attempting to sing alto with growing confidence. You can connect with her at www.sawpublishing.com or on Instagram @courtenayburden.
You may also enjoy:
- Exploring the Life and Legacy of G.K. Chesterton
- Words, Words, Words: Why (and How) to Teach Writing
- Literature-Based Learning for Kindergarten: How to Make it Work
- Reading for the Love of God with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson
- Knowing by Heart: the Powerful Beauty of Memory Work (with Andrew Pudewa)
- Reading, Writing, and Making Connections: Homeschooling High School English (with Betsy Farquhar)
- Strategies for Teaching Homeschool Writing (with Janie B. Cheaney)
- Hop, Skip, and a Rhyme: Listening Well and Delighting in the Beauty of Words (with Megan Andrews)
- Reading and Teaching the Great Books (with Kristen Rudd)
- Identity, Grace, and a Literary Life (video interview with Missy Andrews from Center for Lit)
- Vintage Landmark Books Giveaway
