Emily and I bristle when, on a fairly frequent basis, a child in our library informs us that “fiction is fake,” or “I want to read a true book,” though we know that these ideas are not their own, but have been adopted from adults in their lives. All of us speak and believe according to the ideas we have been fed, and I share here ideas I have gleaned from my own teachers.

I refer to teachers like Jesus Himself, for example, of whom Scripture states, “Without a parable, he did not teach,” (Mt. 13:21) Parables are fabricated stories meant to be enjoyed by all as a literal story and for the instruction of spiritual truth for those who had “ears to hear.” Good fiction does the same, showing life to us so that we can perceive lessons for living our own.

This is the principle Charlotte Mason emphasizes as well when she states that “fiction is of enormous value to us in teaching morals and manners,” as it illustrates for our mind’s eye to see, gives us food for thought. She believed that children should be taught through story – “living books,” as they instruct by showing, as well as telling. In a work of fiction, life is revealed, as if lifting a curtain, to see how others have lived so we can learn how to live our own lives. This is a powerful teaching tool, not just for informing the mind, but the heart as well. After all, there is more to education than knowing information, and learning to live well is a lifetime process, a mystery continuously to be solved. For that reason alone, fiction is more valuable to us than nonfiction.

Mason considered novelists as offering us “a key to the vexed problem of education,” because she recognized the child’s “immense appetite for knowledge, and when he does not want to learn, it is because he does not get the right books. We give children a diet of facts, either condensed or diluted, unaware that the mind has really no use for facts uninformed by intelligence. It takes ideas to evoke ideas, intelligence to awaken intelligence, and the heavy compendiums of the schoolroom are of no use in education.” (Vol. 5, pg. 394) I am not stating that nonfiction is by any means useless, but is helpful most when it appeals to the needs of the whole person, who craves literature of beauty and noble ideas for living, in addition to gaining knowledge for utilitarian information.

Children learn more about who to be and how to behave from stories than from our endless verbal instruction. The short tales and stories of childhood appeal to their short attention span, providing concise explanations of right and wrong and the immediacy of consequences from specific choices. but, as children mature and understand that life is bigger and more complicated than their own familiar surroundings, novels become invaluable instructors for them.

Parents must provide excellent novels to give guidance for their children in ways they cannot give themselves, and not simply to educate them in the classics. Charlotte Mason deplored the attitude that “I’ve read Austen…or Shakespeare,” as a mark of ignorance and as silly as having said, “I’ve eaten breakfast.” Surely breakfast is not a one-time experience. Good novels require being read and reread, the mind of the author, his wisdom and knowledge, continually teaching the discerning reader, as long as that novel is good literature.

Taste, however, must be cultivated, and parents are responsible for ensuring the quality of the books their children read. “It is stupid to disregard such a means of instruction; and yet, judicious parents either ‘disapprove of novel reading for their young people’ or let them read freely the insipid trash of the circulating library until they are unable to discern the flavour of a good book.” (vol. 5, page 374) All that is written is not gold, and much of what passes for it is a waste of time, not to mention of mind. Not only does twaddle not cultivate their taste, it bores children with reading.

We parents can also err in another direction. In a natural desire to protect our children, Sometimes our fear of contamination prevents our children from benefiting from the literature that can nourish them. Here too, Mason advises, “There is a good deal to be said for this point of view; but the decisions of life are not simple, and to taboo knowledge is not to secure innocence. We must remember that ignorance is not innocence, and also that ignorance is the parent of insatiable