Decision Tree

Homelab Notebook #07

Homelab Notebook is a recurring series where I share learnings and lessons from the past month of homeschooling. They typically feature an essay, a deep dive into a piece of content, and books we’ve enjoyed lately.

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1. Administrivia

To keep Christmas sane, my wife and I follow a gifting heuristic. Each kid gets:

Something they want,
Something they need,
Something to wear,
Something to read

Theoretically, this limits us to 16 gifts across our 4 kids. In practice, however, there is a fatal flaw that leads us—okay, me—to overshoot projections.

I have no problem crushing wants, investing in needs, or securing an annual bag of socks. It’s this “something to read” clause that throws me. Despite books seeming like an obvious way to “carve the literary world at its joints,” they don’t cut so cleanly in practice.

Take, for example, The Lord of the Rings. Plainly, this is “something to read.” But so, too, is The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King. Each of these is a “something,” and if we must choose only one, where do we draw the line?

I would be in line to buy the whole trilogy—something I can do as one compilation or as three separate books. But if I go with a box set, how can I justify excluding The Hobbit—is it not a part of the same “thing” to be read, i.e., the fantastic world of late-third-age Middle Earth? Then, too, ought I not include the Silmarillion, which sets the stage for that era, or auxiliary books that enrich it with illustrations, encyclopedic references, or spin-off tales?

To fully read something, don’t you need to see it from all sides? To read Dr. Seuss’s Horton, must one not understand his sense of both filial duty from Horton Hatches An Egg (“I meant what I said, I said what I meant / An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent”) and his wells of compassion in Horton Hears the Who (“A person’s a person, no matter how small”)?

Does a single one of Plato’s dialogues constitute “something”? Or is a curated set more appropriate? The whole printed canon? All of philosophy?

You see my conundrum. Whenever I think, “Okay, we’ve got the kids’ Something-To-Read gift,” I find another book that is vitally related to the first. Horton’s diligence reminds me of Sam Gamgee’s stubborn resolution reminds me of Socrates marching barefoot in the Athenian army.

It’s all connected!

It’s all one “something”!

It’s the world that’s meant to be read; books are just the lenses. At Christmastime, I welcome them all. They don’t need to be classical, or literary, or age-appropriate. Dog Man is as welcome as Call of the Wild. (Though Cujo may get left in the cold.) As long as it’s worth our attention and has that mark of authorial intentionality, then it’s a welcome addition to the pile under the tree.

All this means that when confronted with a book and a “Buy Now” button in December, I have no real decision. I can only succumb to a life-affirming yes, yes!

We may end up with four times more gifts than we “should” under the tree, but what sort of Grinch would I be to cut my kids off from the world?

I don’t want to hear the inevitable counter-argument: that ultimately, these books fill shelves in my house; that I buy books that I want to read; that far from being generous, I use Christmas as an opportunity to indulge my own desires to fill a library with books I feel a nostalgic desire to reclaim in my adulthood.

To those dreadful humbugs, all I can say is, Please hand me The Complete Calvin and Hobbes: 4-Book Box Set in Full Color (Leatherback). That one is really, truly something.

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2. Showcase

Last week, we wrapped our first semester of homeschooling. In lieu of finals, we invited current and former teachers and family members over for a brief project showcase led by our eldest.