Books for Mothers - Industrialization through Modern Times

As a young girl, I spent hours lost in other worlds, it was an escape during a hard childhood. Books were my window to other places, better places, and my connection with others who understood hardship. Interestingly, as I grew up and left the difficult home I grew up in, books continued to offer me hope and inspiration...actually, they never stopped. Books have been faithful friends of mine since early childhood. It is part of why I work hard to be sure my own children know and love good stories. 

There is another reason I continue to be a voracious reader. Books for mothers are important. This quote from Miss Charlotte Mason relays some of my own inner thoughts on this topic:

Finding time to read and books for mothers is hard but worth it.

Friend, I get it. It isn't easy to make time to read. There are children to care for, food to prepare, laundry to fold, and so many other pressing matters in the life of a mom and keeper of the home. If anyone understands, it is me. I work part time in addition to my more traditional roles of motherhood. 

Make time anyway. Bring a book everywhere you go. Even the bathroom. Stash them in baskets around your home. Your bedside, your purse, your favorite place to nurse the baby. Read whenever you have a moment to sit and wait. Designate it as an important task akin to laundry that must be done. You will be amazed how many 10 minute reading sessions will come your way in a week. 

Reading along with your child's history cycle.

Something I began when my eldest started his first year of formal learning was reading books that matched his learning. We study history in the traditional Charlotte Mason manner, where we begin chronologically with our country's history, and work our way forward. Each year, we have a set time period we focus on. I have found that by choosing books for me to also dive into, I internalize the topics my children are studying. I begin to know intimately the people, events, and customs of the era I am sharing with my sons each day. These personal connections I am making help me effortlessly tell than random tidbits to add to our reading together. It allows for deeper conversations and I feel empowered as the teacher to answer many of their questions as they come up. I am not relying on my own far off history lessons (wow, that makes me feel old), but instead, my learning is fresh and recent, my ideas are still forming and taking shape. 

 

There is something really special about your children realizing you care so much about their learning that you have taken it upon yourself to also study the same thing. 

Where do you find the books for mothers?

Sometimes I stumble across a good one or two books naturally, but typically I research in the same places:

• Ambleside Online Year 8 and up book lists
• Reshelving Alexandria Facebook group
• A Gentle Feast Form 4 book list

Books for Mothers - Industrialization through Modern Times

Note: These books are intended to be a list for adult women. There are themes like rape, sex, torture, war crimes, and other very difficult topics in many of these books. I choose not to read books with large amounts of cursing or explicit sex scenes purely for the sake of romantic and lustful storytelling, but there are at times cursing and sexual scenes in many of these texts. These books are in no particular order. They span the world at large, all occurring during the 20th century.

1. God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew
2. Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
3. Gifted Hands by Dr. Ben Carson
4. Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington
5. Grey is the Color of Hope by Irina Ratushinskaia
6. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebccea Skloot
7. The Courage and Character of Theodore Roosevelt by George Grant
8. The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford
9. Witness by Whitaker Chambers
10. The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin
11. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
12. Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly
13. Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
14. The Rape of Nanking  by Iris Chang ***This book was a shock to me. It is filled with history not taught in US classrooms. While it is a very detailed book about the horrors of war, I highly recommend this book for learning more about China and Japan during WWII.
15. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
16. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zore Neale Hurston
17. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
18. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
19. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. Testament of Youth by Vera Britton
21. Let Justice Roll Down by John Perkins
22. Refugee by Alan Gratz
23. Under the Tulip Tree by Michelle Shocklee
24. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
25. The Girls with No Names by Serena Burdick
26. The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
27. Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris
28. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
29. On Hitler's Mountain by Irmgard A. Hunt
30. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
31. Bruchko by Bruce Olsen
32. Peace Child by Don Richardson
33. Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot
34. The Color of Water by James McBride
35. The Pull of Stars by Emma Donoghue
36. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
37. Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter
38. Gulag by Anne Applebaum
39. Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
40. The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee
41. Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang

If you have books to suggest for this era, leave a comment! I plan to provide a similar list as we move back in time next year and revisit ancient history as well as early US history.