This is one of the most amazing books for mothers! Oh my, I am loving it so much! The subtitle says it all: “The power of reading aloud to overcome fear and recapture joy.” I am listening to it in scribd. (Scribd is an app you can put on your phone so you can listen to or read from, as many books as your heart desires and your time allows. You get all this magic for one low monthly fee around $10. Go here to learn more.)

The author, Jennifer Pepito, tells her story of how fear took over her life as a mother. She found healing in journaling and reading aloud. She then goes into exactly how reading aloud certain books helped her overcome fear and in turn how they can help you. She goes into very specific fears, common to most mothers, such as fear of being alone, fear of the baby years (personally, that’s not one I relate to), fear of not having enough, fear of your children being behind in school, and many more. I’ve listed them at the bottom of this post.

You can listen to Jennifer discuss this beautifully healing book in an interview with Pam Barnhill in this podcast over here.

You gotta love a book for mothers that focuses on lessons learned from Pride and Prejudice right away, in Chapter 2. Mrs. Bennett gives the author plenty of fodder to analyze and dish up wisdom to us readers.

Here are all the books Jennifer, the author, shares lessons from:

Pride and Prejudice

Baby

Charlotte’s Web

Understood Betsy

All-of-a-Kind Family

The Railway Children

Little House on the Prairie Series

Little Britches

Freedom Train

Endurance

The Hiding Place

 The Door in the Wall

Then here are all the fears she addresses:

-fear of being alone

-fear of the baby years

-fear of failure

-fear of children getting behind

-fear of children leaving the faith

-fear of failing your own children

-fear of the future

-fear of not having enough

-fear of not being able to manage

-fear of being a leader

-fear in general

What the author, Jennifer, does, is use each book listed above for a chapter. For each chapter she uses each book to show a lesson she learned from it to overcome one fear from the list above. I’ll leave it to you to see if you can match up the book with the specific fear to be overcome. I love book-themed challenges and games! (One of these days I will blog about my favorite book-themed tabletop games.)

As a homeschooling, read-aloud mom myself who has faced many fears, I concur with the author. Reading aloud has been therapy for me too. It has given me pleasure in the moment, brightened many a dreary day, and kept me from getting too depressed when I was going through tough times. I mean, I did get depressed, but the reading aloud helped the depression be manageable. Reading aloud has and continues to give me many delights! It makes any homeschooling day magical.

Listen to. or read this book when you want to feel a hug and validation for all your mothering efforts. Moreover, listen to it when you want encouragement to either start reading aloud to your children, or to continue reading aloud. If you are a Christian mother, especially a Christian homeschooling mother, you will love it! (P.S. if you subscribe to scribd, you can read it as an ebook, and listen to it as an audiobook too!)

Image Credit above: thepeacefulpreschool.com. All other images credit: scribd, amazon, and goodreads.com.