Books for children and YA: what to keep?

Unclutterer ForumsWelcomeHello!

Books for children and YA: what to keep?

(20 posts) (13 voices)

Started 1 year ago by lazycow
Latest reply from lottielot
RSS feed for this topic

Overall Rating: votes

Tags:

lazycow
Member

A couple of years ago I'd have never thought to ask this question, but I've been on a decluttering journey for a while now, and am ready for some honest answers!

I love books and reading, my children (10 and 7) love books and reading. We have 2000 books at home (which I've lovingly catalogued on LibraryThing, like the good ex-librarian that I am). This year I've donated several hundred (gulp) books already, and would get rid of more but for one thing: I'm keeping lots of books for when my children 'grow into' them. Already my 10yo daughter is reading YA stuff (from the library and our shelves) but I'm not sure if it is my responsibility to keep books (which I've read) that she MAY read one day. For example, titles like "The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency", or "The curious incident of the dog..." Books that she might like in 4-5 years time. I guess I like the idea of the home library being a place which has a book for every mood and moment, but am realising that it isn't terribly realistic, especially when all these books are at most libraries (and easily found 2nd hand). I've probably answered my own question, but am curious as to what other parents did/do?

Posted 1 year ago #
emjayjay
Member

I think you did answer your own question. We used to have thousands of books too. My girls read a lot. After a long decluttering process, I now just keep a few frequently used reference items and otherwise, the library is our source. It's so much easier this way and anything I want to recommend is readily available or easy to find.

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

I don't know, really, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here :) I have books which my parents kept from my childhood which I now read to my kids and which they enjoy reading, I actually really love that connection across the generations and some have gone out of print now and aren't easily replaced. I intend to keep the books for my grandkids, except perhaps the ones which have literally fallen apart with over-use. I'm not at all sentimental about my own adult books, I only keep ones I know I'll re-read or which I'd like to lend out or have the kids read later, books with real meaning for me which I love. However, my kids' books all have meaning either to me or to them, so to me they fall under the category of 'keep'. I sometimes even re-read older kids books to myself, there's nothing quite as special as a book you loved as a child. Our library does not have a good enough selection of older kids books for me to want to chuck out ours and rely on their collection, if yours does then fine. If you do chuck some books which you think your kids will enjoy later, then if you have a list then at least you know which are old favourites. I like the idea of a home library as you described too, my parents' book collection is a bit like that and I love browsing their shelves when I visit, but if it's not 'realistic' then by all means get rid of your books. Why not ask your kids too? After all, they may have their own opinions!

Posted 1 year ago #
Rosa
Member

lazycow, I think it is good to keep at least a few above-age books around, so they can find them on their own when they're ready. But it's not a responsibility, or super-important, especially if your kids have a school library and a public library to use.

I am kind of burdened by the books I've inherited - my mom taught elementary lit, and her best friend was a school librarian, and we've been given LOTS of books. I keep weeding them down but it's hard.

Posted 1 year ago #
chacha1
Member

lazycow, I am also playing devil's advocate. If your kids love to read, the best way to keep them reading is to have lots of books around. And you never know when they'll be ready to "move up" - I started reading my parents' mystery fiction when I was 10.

Without knowing what shelving arrangements you've made, something I would have loved as a kid was a shelf running all the way around the top of my room. I never had enough space for books, so they tended to pile up on surfaces, were hard to keep organized, etc.

"A book for every mood and moment" is exactly what I have in my home now. Of course, I am also the originator of the "library that ate my apartment" thread, so you may want to be a wee bit skeptical!

Posted 1 year ago #
bandicoot
Member

i am very torn on this.
on one hand, i grew up in a house stuffed full of books and was reading before i went to school. and nonstop since.
on the other hand, this early conditioning makes it very hard for me to let go of a lot of clutter books now!

on the whole i think it is more important to foster and encourage literacy in children, and making plenty of books available at home is a big part of that.
perhaps commit to hanging onto the books for a while yet?
there are many things i'd rather toss than books.

Posted 1 year ago #
lazycow
Member

Thanks everyone, I knew I'd get lots of intelligent opinions :-)

@emjay, I'm not at the stage where I could just have a 'few' books around. That may come in the future but I doubt it :-) I'm not that evolved.

@lottielot, I completely agree with having special childhood books about. I was a mercenary child, and sold off boxes of my treasured Enid Blytons, Nancy Drews, Trixie Beldens, etc, which I've since spent years (and plenty of dollars) buying back! One of my most treasured possessions is my 30 year old copy of "Little Women" which I've just read to my daughter.

@Rosa, I didn't have a lot of books when I was growing up. Enough to fill one bookshelf, so I'd use the school and public libraries all the time. I didn't have an urge to possess every book I read back then. That developed over the years, and I'm trying hard to reverse the process now.

@chacha1, I do have 'plate rail' shelving all down my hallway which used to be filled with books. I took them off, as it felt too dark, and that they may all topple onto us one day! I've got Agatha Christies lying around, just waiting for my daughter's interest (she's already read some of the fantastic graphic books based on some of Christie's most famous novels, so she's not far off). We have 1 Billy bookshelf in each child's room, 2 Billy bookshelves and 1 big Expedit unit in the playroom, all full of kids' books. It's really - probably - enough!

@bandicoot, my feelings exactly! I'm leaning toward keeping all the 'quality' children's literature, and all the hard-to-find stuff, as lottielot mentioned. I've already gotten rid of most of the series books (Babysitter's Club and the like), which they can easily get at the library. I've finally stopped the compulsion to buy EVERY book in a series if they express an interest in it!

Posted 1 year ago #
klutzgrrl
Member

You'll have to find some middle point that you're comfortable with.

I'm a big fan of having plenty of books around. SO often my teenage daughter - who devours two-inch-thick novels in a weekend - will come wandering through the house wailing "I've run out of books!" and so I'll ferret around in the shelves to find something that might suit.

And neither my public library nor the local bookstore has a copy of "Stranger in a Strange Land" which I desperately need to read again. I gradually sold all my Scifi when I was at uni (college) to pay for art materials. :(

If you can afford it, a less cluttered option might be to give her an Ebook reader with a generous account at a bookstore. (Oh I wish.... )

Posted 1 year ago #
JayEff
Member

At any given moment, my wife, 6-year-old son, 3-year-old daughter, and I have 75 to 100 books checked out of the library. We purchased several of the children's favorite books, but, pretty much, all our books come from the library. There is less clutter that way, and we save tons of money. Books are incredibly important to me, but I, personally, have no need to own many.

On the other hand, my father has floor-to-ceiling shelves two-deep in several rooms of his house. For him, they are not clutter. For me, they would be.

Posted 1 year ago #
Rosa
Member

Klutzgrrl, here: abebooks.com
It's a consortium of used bookstores. They have more than 1,000 copies of Stranger on hand right this minute.

Lazycow, can the girls help you declutter the books? Even if they aren't at the right level for some yet, you and they have an idea of their interests. And it's a good habit to start weeding books regularly.

Plus if they don't have any interest in having the above-level books in their space then they become your problem and you have to weigh them against your own books on your own shelves. That will make it look less important to keep them, I bet :)

Posted 1 year ago #
Nithy
Member

klutzgrrl, if you don't want to buy it, you can ask the library to get it on Inter-Library Loan for you. I've done that to get tons of stuff I've wanted to look at that I didn't want to have to track down and buy and keep.

As far as book clutter and having books on hand for your kids to read in the future: If they're popular books that the library has, and you're not really sure if your kids will want to read them, don't save them all. It sounds like you and the kids are comfortable using the library.

My mom loves mystery books and I love Sci-Fi/fantasy, so there was never a whole lot of overlap between her interests and mine. She used to take me to the library booksale and we'd both load up on books that looked interesting to each of us.

Also, tastes change. Things you think your kids may be ready for and enjoy in a few years might not even appeal to them when they're old enough to read them.

Posted 1 year ago #
STLMom
Member

I grew up in a house where there was a book for every mood, and we also brought home stacks of books from the library. One year my dad, my brother and I decided to merge each of our science fiction and fantasy books into one collection. My dad built bookshelves all the way across one wall of my brother's room, floor to ceiling, and over a few years we filled every shelf. I have many fond memories of browsing through those books. Because we read many of the same books, we could also talk about them with each other. So I can see the appeal of wanting to save books so your kids can read your favorites.
On the other hand, there's only so much space in any home. My suggestion would be that whenever your current shelf space overflows, it's time for a purge. Like you said, past best sellers or award winners are easy to find, so I would give priority to keeping books that might go out of print.
Now please excuse me while I try to convince my husband that when we have books stacked on top of the cupboards in the basement, it might be time to let some go!

Posted 1 year ago #
Jude2004
Member

I would keep them. As a librarian, the books I buy my sons are passed among a large group of kids. Thus, while I grabbed Mockingjay first, one of my son's friends is reading it now, and my son is just now getting around to reading the second book in the series. Not all books are worth keeping, but all of us have enjoyed reading the Oz books (my youngest child is 16; my oldest is 28) and everything we've purchased by Scott Westerfeld. If you have books, you can lend books.

Posted 1 year ago #
Jude2004
Member

And the other thing we've all read and loved are the Choose Your Own Adventure Books which I bought for my daughter and which made it through all three kids. My son asked me for one of them last spring because he was making his own Choose Your Own Adventure book for creative writing and he needed a model.

Posted 1 year ago #
lazycow
Member

@klutzgrrl, I haven't quite come around to the ebook technology yet, though your idea made me look at prices for one for me! Just for future reference...

@JayEff, sigh, would you believe that we also often have between 50-100 items out on loan from the library, and belong to THREE different libraries?

@Rosa, my son, who's 7 is very good at decluttering his books, but his sister likes to keep everything. So I've resolved not to buy her any more, until she gets rid of some.

@Nithy, with your advice in mind, I went through the childrens' books and got rid of some books I'm fairly sure they can source elsewhere, if they're interested.

@STLMom, exactly!! I've decided that what really bothered me was that there were books crammed in everywhere and it looked really messy. Over the weekend I weeded out some books, and now everything fits neatly on the shelves and is easy to access. Have decided that I'll only keep enough books that fit on the shelves, and NO MORE!

@Jude2004, I agree. I LOVE lending out my books, and get a real buzz out of it. In fact, no friend leaves my house without having a book pressed onto them that they 'must' read :-) My daughter and I are waiting impatiently for "Mockingjay" from the library (it's just been released in Aus), but have 2 book vouchers from local bookstores and am desperatly trying not to give in to the siren call of a new book...but it's only ONE book...

Have pulled out my copy of "Anne of Green Gables" and started reading it to my daughter, and my son is now enjoying "Martin's mice" by Dick King-Smith, which we've had for ages. How I adore books :-)

Posted 1 year ago #
Rozzie
Member

<<you can ask the library to get it on Inter-Library Loan for you.>>
Only if it's available where she lived. I lived for many years in an area where the only library system in the region did not participate in ILL. They would not get a book from outside their small library system even if you were willing to pay the associated costs.

Most libraries do have access to ILL. Some areas do have a fee for people to use this service. Sometimes this fee can be fairly high ($5 and up per book). So, it's worth knowing your local situation before counting on it.

That said, thank goodness for ILL! I use it all the time.

Posted 1 year ago #
klutzgrrl
Member

Yep, inter-library loan is quite expensive here, so I only use it for things like expensive academic books (assuming they are in the system at all).

With things like favourite novels, often I'll want to go back and re-read a passage. And Stranger in a Strange Land was a pivotal moment for me, so I want my own copy. (I'll check out online sellers, thanks for the reminder!)

I think books are one of those areas where there is no 'one size fits all' solution - how we use them is such a personal thing.

And use is the big thing: I always think it's a little sad when I'm in someone's home and they have a bookcase filled with old coffee-table volumes - you know, the usual references and large picture books on nature or whatever - plus a half-dozen blockbuster novels, read once and forgotten - that clearly haven't been opened in ten years. Pointless.

Posted 1 year ago #
djk
Member

ages ago I made it a policy that I could not buy a book until I had already read it and knew I would read it over and over. Whenever there was a review or recommendation that caught my eye, I would put it on hold at the library, then decide after reading if it was one I wanted to have, or would I be happy to get it out of the library again if I wanted to.

For most of my life I had waaaay too many books, but I agree with Klutzgrrl--a home without books looks barren and uncomfortable to me. So my rule is that when the bookshelves are full, then no more books come in unless several go out.
Bookshelves are visual noise as well, which means that other surfaces should be clear, and the bookshelves should have some order and thought in their arrangement so things are not jammed in and toppling every which way. Ours are mostly there right now, although they have to house all my work papers and files, reference books, cds, stereo, dvds, and office supplies. Plus my husband's work reference material, cds, dvds, work papers...

as for saving books for your kids, I would say very few require keeping. There are school and public libraries. Perhaps they can keep one meaningful book from every year of their lives? until they start buying their own, of course!

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

Love love love Anne of Green Gables :) When I was about 9-12, I spent every cent of my pocket money on all LM Montgomery's books, my parents still have my collection in my old bedroom at home though I rescued Anne last year when I went back there. Every time I go back I retrieve as many books as I can fit in my suitcase! I know I could probably buy them secondhand or new but there's something about the actual books I had as a kid...they're so formative. Ds1 just read Emil and the Detectives, that used to be one of my faves :) It's quite funny that I have an ongoing battle with dh who keeps every book he ever buys, but I'm keeping books from my childhood. But my books have meaning and will be read and loved, whereas dh will never re-read a book, what's the point of keeping them then?

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

and I just had another thought. I love Amazon, but the difference between Amazon and a really good bricks and mortar bookshop (new or second hand) is the serendipity factor :) I highly rate that serendipity factor for home libraries as well!

Posted 1 year ago #

Reply

You must log in to post. If you do not already have an account, you can register here.