Mothering By the Book

A book review of Mothering By The Book: The Power of Reading Aloud to Overcome Fear and Recapture Joy by Jennifer Pepito

Stars: ****

Bethany House (2022)
Christian Nonfiction
240 pages

Disclosure: l received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.

Summary: Becoming a better, happier mom starts with the stories you tell your kids. As a mom, you want to nurture a strong family, but fear steals your joy. Sometimes you wonder if you’re failing your children or whether you’re cut out for this.

Beloved writer and mom of seven Jennifer Pepito understands. She was intent on loving her children well, but fear and worry pushed her around. Ultimately, she found her joy in a most surprising place: the pages of classic literature she was reading aloud to her children every day. These stories helped her reclaim the wonder of childhood for herself and her children. In Mothering by the Book, Jennifer takes you on a fascinating, whimsical journey that will bring freedom and fun to your parenting–one great book at a time.

Mothering By the Book

This book was not quite what I thought it was going to be, but that turned out to be quite all right. Unlike the other books about reading aloud that I’ve read this year, this one is about much more than that. This is first and foremost a parenting book that uses literature from read alouds as a guide to it’s knowledge.

This turned out to be a unique way to read and was probably a unique way to write. In each chapter, a common parenting fear is discussed. Fears of such things as being alone, failure, children leaving the faith, future etc.

Within each fear chapter, lessons from a read aloud Jennifer did with her family is discussed. Some books were well known like Charlotte’s Web while some I hadn’t heard of before. In each chapter, lessons from the read alouds are shared as well as tons of wisdom from the author’s years. The book is very inspirational and makes you want to overcome your hardships. The fact that she can inspire many with knowledge she gleaned from books is just the icing on the cake. So many of us have found books that have saved us.

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