Kate's my daughter and it's this story really that started the whole Good and Beautiful journey. When
my daughter was young, she came home from school one day, and I was sitting on the porch. I had a
home baked snack ready for her, and I was excited to see her. She was with her friend and she said,
"Hey can I go play with my friend?" and I said, "Sure, but why don't you come on in and we'll have some
family time first." Her and her friend looked at each other and rolled their eyes and my daughter
goes, "Family time? I don't need family time." And she walked away. I was thinking that day, like, how
does my daughter have this character where she's so disrespectful? I was thinking we're a good
family, we study the Bible, we have prayers, we're not perfect, but we are a loving family and
we're trying so hard to teach our children good character. That night I was cleaning up some things
in my daughter's bedroom, and she had a book that was open and a couple lines caught my attention.
So I started reading them, and it was about a girl who was rolling her eyes at her parents and
talking about how annoying her siblings were. And I started reading all these other books that she had
in her room and it suddenly clicked for me. She's an avid reader, so she was reading all these books
all the time and I realized how much they were affecting her character. And I was thinking, I was
an English major at school in college and loved good literature, and I thought I don't know if
she's ever even read any poetry. I don't know if she likes any good books. I was just really not
happy with the way her character was turning out and the kind of books that she was loving.
So I decided that I was going to preview every book that she read and I made a list of books
that she could read. She could only read from those books. Now I wish I could tell you that the
story was just like: and it was wonderful and my daughter just changed, but that's not the way that
happened. My daughter was not happy about this. She loved reading and she loved these book series and
and she was not happy, but I stuck with it. And so I actually did what Thomas Edison's parents did, I
mean he turned out pretty good, right? So I paid her to read. We didn't pay her any allowance, so the
only way that she could get money was through reading. And I'm not saying that you have to do it
that way, but it worked for us because whatever you have to do to get your kids immersed. Read our
video, or watch our video, How to Get Your Kids Interested in Good and Beautiful Books. It's so
important. It took two years until she started even thinking that these books that I was giving her on
this list were interesting. She would always say, "Oh they're so boring, they're so stupid." But after
two years she would start coming to me and saying, "Look at this, look at this book," or "I love this book."
And in the meantime, we were reading books together and I would talk to her about how much I
love the messages and pointing out the beautiful description, and you guys it completely changed
this girl. She went from a girl that was kind of bratty and didn't want to spend time with family to
I know she came to me one day and she was like, "Oh I want to I want to go live on a farm,
so that my kids can learn how to work hard and so that we can all be a strong family together."
And I just smiled because I knew that she had just finished reading some books that had to do with
that topic, and I could see how they were affecting her. When she was 16, we went on a
an airplane flying together, and she was reading this old book that was written in
the late 1800s and just loving it so much. She was sitting there saying, "Oh read this description,
this paragraph is just incredible." And I think the lady sitting next to us was like is this
really a 16 year old girl? How can she just be loving this book? And it has deeply impacted
her character. All of my children have benefited. My seven-year-old can discern for himself what
is good and what is not. He'll say, "Oh this isn't a good book," and he'll stop reading it. It is such a
blessing that we give our children: to give them good books, and to help them to discern, and to
learn what is good and what is not. I decided that it was a lot of work to review all of those books
that my daughter was reading. I was reading them on the treadmill, I was reading them at stoplights
(don't tell anybody), but I thought I've got to give this list to other parents because not
all parents can do this. I was having a lot of help. People were previewing them for me
and a lot of things, and it was a lot of money too because for every book that we put
on the list there were ten or twenty or thirty books that we reviewed that we couldn't put on
the list. And so that was the beginning of The Good and the Beautiful Book List and this whole
journey. I hope that The Good and the Beautiful Book Lists can be a blessing for your family.