Tough to Find Quality Books at Your Library?

I had a revelation yesterday as I was attempting to clean out this year's planning binder to ready it for next year, and I want to share it in case you are as picky as I am about which books your children read. (Are you already Prayerfully Planning for Next Year? Don't forget to begin by Prayerfully Reflecting on Last Year!)

My children love going to the library, and we try to go every two weeks to linger and look. And, I am pleased to say that our library has invested in some great series books by well-known Christian publishers, so we have happily devoured most of hose. But, with so much twaddle out there, it's often difficult to just browse the shelves and hope to find something acceptable. My daughter, in particular, who is 11 but has been reading at a level 3-4 years above her age for 3-4 years, always grabs books for me to preview, and often, the content focuses too much on modern themes that I wish to avoid at her tender age.

Enter the Library Binder. You see, I have printed a variety of lists which I have determined to be acceptable for our standards from various sources and periodically consult them to help my independent readers choose books. The difficulty is that they are always at home and stored in various places: some in my planning binder, some in my file cabinet, some in my action file on my desk, etc. My simple, but possibly brilliant idea, is to three-hole punch all of those lists, stick them in a slim three-ring binder and keep it in my library bag. That way, whenever we are at the library hunting good books, we have a starting point!

Now, if I was really savvy, I would save all of these files in one spot on my tablet (the one my husband insisted I buy for my home business when I was in the midst of burn-out and needed to reorganize my life) in an editable form and bring that with us, but I'm still transitioning to paperless organization and figuring out how to do all that. Baby steps. Right?

Here are just a few of the lists I have printed, in no particular order, although there are many, many more good ones out there! If you have a great booklist, please leave a link in the comments. Then, get ready for summer reading by creating your own Library Binder and let me know how it goes!

1000 Good Books from Classical Christian Education

8 Catholic Reading Lists in One (not free, $7 for download)

Angelicum Good Books Program (click on each grade level to see literature)

Books for Boys and Other Children Who Would Rather Build Forts All Day (look in description for link to PDF booklist)

Elizabeth Foss's Real Learning Booklists