Honey For a Child's Heart Review

Honey For a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt is a Christian non-fiction parenting book with a focus on reading to your children. She discusses the value and benefits of reading to them and the ways we can raise our children to love reading and become readers.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. I really liked it but after the first half, the book dragged and felt bogged down by the lists. The writing style and content are strong, easy to follow and interesting.

I like what she had to say about the things that make a book good. The time she took to address the question “how do I decide what books to read to my children/ or let them read” was really well done. I loved how she encourages parents to let kids be imaginative and not try to squelch it out of them in the name of “what is real” vs. “make believe” and calms a parents fear that they will lose site of the reality of God when faced with books about things that aren’t real (especially when looking at fantasy/ magic elements). I also appreciated that this was not the only aspect of those questions that she addressed (ex} original work vs. modernized, etc.).

I enjoyed that Hunt included spiritual content, not just in book recommandations but in the topic itself. It is very important to be reading Scripture and spiritual content together as a family and she goes into this with some depth. I liked that she didn’t gloss over this or leave it out altogether.

As much as I appreciate that she included a number of book lists, it just felt like too much. The lists (at least half of which included blurbs) took up more than half of the book , and I could feel that. Maybe if she had arranged them differently or didn’t include blurbs it would be better (but I couldn’t say for sure that those changes would help). Perhaps it is much better not to try and read all these sections right away, but only look at the ones that fit what stages your children are currently in.

Overall, it was a good book and a strong resource for book suggestions for all kids 14 and under, for Christian faith supplementary reading, and special occasions like Thanksgiving and Easter, etc. I like the book and might return to it for future reference.