As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to love reading fantastic literature. I enjoyed stories from history like Daniel James Brown’s Boys in the Boat and M. L. Shetterly’s Hidden Figures. I’ve learned from Shinichi Suzuki’s Nurtured by Love and Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery. I’ve been entranced by stories and mysteries and learned from the lives of great men and women. In all this, I’ve developed a particular attachment to what might be considered an additional genre of books: good and beautiful literature.
In my family, we are encouraged to seek out of the best books words of wisdom, which draws a distinction between good books, better books, and “the best books.” While this separation is subjective, I would suggest good and beautiful literature as belonging to this category of “the best books.” Good and beautiful books use an educated vernacular, are engaging, and impart character-building themes. They are of high literary value and inspiring, often imparting historical perspectives and encompassing what are considered “the classics.”
Great books expand our ability to communicate and understand words. Popular books over the last 150 years have become far less complex.1 Think about the difference between the writing in Little Women, which was a popular book for youngsters in 1868, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which was written in 2007 and is intended for the same audience. Is reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid going to teach your brain to write as well as Little Women? Modern writing often lacks the variety, description, and poetic language that teaches good communication, evoking the social commentary of Ray Bradbury in his book Fahrenheit 451. He writes, “Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm… Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more… School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored… Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”2 The comparison between Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Little Women is instructive, perhaps an example of the simplification Bradbury describes. The divergence from complex thought, a “dumbing down,” can’t promote creativity and innovation; it doesn’t create a generation of great minds or leaders. Great books, though usually older, improve communication abilities because they convey complex thoughts.3
Great books teach morality. According to one study of fourth-grade readers, an average of 16.01/25 pages in 1810 incorporated a moral lesson. By 1930, that number had dropped to 1/25. In 1950, it was .06/25, a 99.6% decrease over 140 years.4 Another study found that the purpose of books has changed drastically. Between 1836 and 1855, 77% of books had themes relating to social and religious behavior and 7% were for amusement. These numbers steadily inverted until, in the period 1916-1935, 2% reflected religious and social behavior, with 58% being for amusement.5 Reading has increasingly become a form of entertainment and venturing further and further from moral education. Morals are the things that hold a society together, a common understanding that I’m not going to kill my neighbor or take your stuff. The trend toward exclusion of such content in modern literature is unsettling. There is no guarantee that most will encounter morals in their reading, in the books proffered by schools, libraries, and bestseller lists. Hence, an emphasis in the writing of bygone days. Good and beautiful books are usually older because modern writing doesn’t frequently include the timeless morals needing emphasis in our modern world.
When you read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, one sees how Meg is gentle and kind. One sees how Jo strives so mightily to control her temper. One wants to be more like her. When one reads Elizabeth Yates’ Patterns on the Wall, one sees more beauty in nature, noticing things one had previously disregarded. We need this perspective in our lives.
Local sixteen-year-old Ava Blalock-Yeich commented, “It seems as the decades pass, the books we read get less inspirational and have fewer good principles. My family likes to call these books twaddle. They are just used for a thrill and excitement… I have read so many books that have affected how I see the world and how I think… While some of these books can be a little boring or hard to understand, we need to give them a chance and really delve into the lessons and principles that they are trying to teach.” 6 Books have the potential to teach about character, empathy, and thinking. We need to be reading these books that impart encouraging wisdom, that help us resolve to be better.
The following is an excellent example from Elizabeth Yates’ book, Patterns on the Wall: “Jared went on with his work singing quietly to himself for pleasure at the room that had come into its perfect bloom, so that the only work remaining was the small finishing touches here and there. It was such a warm room; with its spruce yellow walls that kept their cheer even against the stark white country that peered in at each one of the four windows… Yes, it was beautiful, the best yet that he had done. But, and he smiled widely to himself as he heard Mr. Toppan saying, ‘That’s not to say I can’t do better.’”7
I love the descriptive language in this passage, which demonstrates the beauty in simple, everyday scenes. Spending time contemplating the beauty he sees helps me see beauty in the simple scenes of my world and incorporate similar illustrations in my writing. The speaker also shows his satisfaction over extended effort, all while acknowledging the possibility of better work in the future. There’s a great feeling that comes when you’ve worked hard at something and done excellently, and I love how Elizabeth Yates accentuates that. Diary of a Wimpy Kid and other middle-grade literature wouldn’t include similar extended description or moral instruction because it was written to entertain. Reading older books requires a greater attention span because their sentences are more complex, their descriptions more elaborate, and their themes more concealed. But it’s these very things that make good and beautiful books so remarkable.
It’s evident that good and beautiful literature was more common in the past, especially when considering moral and literary value and focusing on books meant for general consumption. However, that’s not to say that great literature can’t be or isn’t published today. Experience has simply shown that it’s more difficult to find and that history is full of great options for modern reading lists.
Reading great literature prepares an individual to lead. David McCullough emphasizes in his biography of John Adams that Adams was well-read. 8 Being capable of holding conversation and speaking knowledgeably on a variety of topics, not just those taught on the conveyor belt of adolescent development, prepared him to handle various situations. A Jeffersonian biographer wrote that Jefferson’s studies were “years of virtually uninterrupted reading, not only in the law but also in the ancient classics, English Literature, and general political philosophy.”9 Some schools of thought about leadership education instruct the use of the classics in training young minds. It’s only logical that reading what leaders read in their development, as Adams and Jefferson did, prepares an individual to become one.10 Transcendentalist thinker William Ellery Channing Adds, “In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts and pour their souls into ours.”11 Reading great literature, good and beautiful books, develops the mind and prepares teens to lead, now and in the future.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Maryland’s English classes. In that time – literal years of my life – I don’t know whether I’ve been handed five of these books. I’ve read them on my own, but it seems our conveyor belt is more focused on embracing newer texts, often void of the noteworthy qualities found in good and beautiful books. Why aren’t the classics proffered? Why do we place such an emphasis on darkness and divergence when there is so much that is good and beautiful?
I understand it’s important to study the dark moments of history, of the human experience. I’ll be the first to support the idea that studying life under Stalin or in Russian-occupied Berlin is incredibly instructive, or that talking about religious persecution helps us see the metaphorical writing that may be on our modern metaphorical wall. But all things must be taken in moderation. When teens are forced to study genocide for three months, or when it’s hard to find a book that doesn’t contain foul language or promiscuousness – that’s what I’ve got a problem with. When there is so much that is so good and so beautiful, we shouldn’t be spending all our time mired in the dark and dreadful.
There’s something so liberating about reading because you want to. I’ve spent time with homework, being busy, lacking the time to do much aside from that which was required. Reading what I want to because I want to, with no other reason than learning what I want, reinforces my independence. I’m not a slave to the system of homework and studying and only learning what I need to remember for the test. Great literature has great potential to benefit our lives. It is our opportunity, perhaps our duty, to spend time with the best books, for in doing so, we commune with the great minds of the past. We will become better people. We will be better prepared for what missions may come our way. We need to be reading better books.
1 Phillips, Jenny. How Books Have Changed in the Past Century. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qI1- pGiqJ0&t=211s. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.
2 Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 19 Oct. 1953.
3 Phillips, Jenny.
4 Decharms, Richard, and G. H. Moeller. 1962.
5 Andrews, Sharon Vincz, and Indiana State University. Teaching Kids to Care: Exploring Values through Literature and Inquiry. 1994.
6 Blalock-Yeich, Ava.
7 Yates, Elizabeth. Patterns on the Wall. 1943.
8 Mccullough, David G. John Adams. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2008, p. 48.
9 Fawn Mckay Brodie. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York, W.W. Norton & Co, 2010.
10 Van Demille, Oliver. A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century. 2000.
11 Channing, William Ellery.
