Recently, we were asked to share the origin story of Beautiful Books Library with The Card Catalog, an online source for private living books librarians. This article will be featured in their “Librarian Stories” sometime soon. Until then, we wanted to share it with our subscribers and patrons. This is how our little library came to be:
Several years ago, we taught our oldest child to read. As parents, we were entering a new stage of life where we no longer had total control over the stories that would be told to our children. We would take our kids to the local public library and let them pick out whatever books piqued their interests. As we surveyed their selections, we were less than delighted to consistently see the likes of My Little Pony, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Ninjago. Notably absent was any book that might increase their understanding of the world around them. It was as though we were letting our children order their own food at a restaurant. I’m not sure why we were surprised when they consistently chose the literary equivalent of junk food.
It didn’t take long for us to conclude that if we wanted our children to learn to love good literature, we were going to have to hand pick the books they would read. We knew the danger of taking our children to the public library and selecting only the good books. Our children would feel as though we wouldn’t let them have the “fun books,” and they’d be predisposed to dislike what we ended up checking out. Most good children’s literature doesn’t offer immediate appeal to children. It doesn’t sparkle.
So we resolved to cease our public library visits and to begin filling the shelves of our home with used copies of good books. This, of course, required us to research which books we should purchase. Around this time I read The Death of Christian Culture by John Senior, a work of hard-hitting cultural criticism. In an appendix he included what he termed The Thousand Good Books. This list was divided into age ranges and contained works that he considered to be preparatory for the virtuous life. They would properly form what Edmund Burke called the moral imagination and predispose students to be able to lead virtuous lives.
So we began ordering books that were on his list and reading them together. We started with works like Aesop’s Fables, Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, and classics like Black Beauty and Swiss Family Robinson. We began a family tradition of putting on a pot of tea, lighting the fireplace, and gathering in the living room for family reading. We felt like we had discovered a hidden treasure.
In the meantime, some friends of ours continued using the public library and were alarmed to discover books in the children’s section which were grossly inappropriate for young readers. They were obviously written by activists who wanted to convince young children to be warriors of leftist causes. A quick lookup of the library’s recent purchase history revealed that this was the majority of what was being acquired. It only takes a few minutes of internet research to discover that the librarian profession as a whole now consists of Marxists who want to use librarianship as a tool to spread the progressive liberal agenda. As we began to publicly protest this institutional drift, many other local homeschooling families found themselves no longer trusting the public library and thus without a trustworthy source for good children’s literature.
We considered loaning our meager collection to our friends, but we knew that wouldn’t be able to fill the literary needs of multiple families for very long. So we once again turned to the internet to see what others had done in this scenario. As providence would have it, we discovered the Biblioguides website and their list of “Private Lending Libraries.” It was a short leap from there to the Plumfield Moms podcast, Michelle Howard, and the League of Lending Librarians Facebook group. From these resources, we’ve been able to learn how others in the same situation have managed to fill their homes with good books and loan them to other families.
We began entering our books into LibraryThing in January of 2024, and by August, we conducted a soft opening of sorts by recruiting our friends to take part in a pilot program. The pilot group’s mission was to check out books, read them, return them, and give us all the feedback. It helped us work out any kinks before inviting paying patrons to join. The pilot group ran from August 2024 to December 2024, and we learned a lot from that whole process. It was a perfect fit for us. The pilot program members were given free access to the online catalogue in exchange for their suggestions, comments, and critiques. It was very low-pressure, and enabled us to hone in on some weak points and make everything as smooth as we could before opening.
When we officially launched on January 1, 2025, several families joined as patrons, and we have enjoyed every minute of it. We currently offer online browsing, where patrons can place holds on books. We offer “librarian’s choice,” which consists of our family picking out books that we think each patron family will like. Not all of our families do this, but those who do say they love the surprise each week and have found gems that they might have passed over otherwise. Our size also allows us to have a personal touch with our members by working with them and their individual schooling needs. We live in a downtown area, which makes front porch pick up and drop off a little easier. We place all books inside a tote (with our logo on it) and set it on the porch or we deliver books to our patrons who take part in a local
homeschool co-op. They place their totes full of books in a bin in the morning, and by the time co-op is finished, we have replaced their returns with fresh books for the week.
In the summer of 2025, we plan on adding in-house browsing and possibly a book club or program. Before that happens, we need to continue converting a certain room in our house into the official library. Right now, it’s also our office. So we’ve got our work cut out for us. It’s all good fun!
We love sharing great children’s books with our patron families that are inevitably shaping young minds for the better. Our oldest child enjoys writing her own stories, and we can see her characters resembling those of the books she has read. This phenomena of children’s imaginations imitating the content they consume is universal and undeniable. The books your child reads ARE the stories that will shape their imagination, so choose them well! This is what we want to offer to other families: the opportunity to grow and be shaped by the very best books.
**If you are interested in learning more about the private lending library movement, Plumfield Moms produces a podcast called Our Librarian Life where several private lending librarians from around the country share their experiences of owning private libraries.**