August 31, 2026
8 Books We're Reading This Year
In the Company of Ideas
We invite you to join us for some intentional reading over the next year. We’ve curated a list of titles to encourage and equip you as educators and lifelong learners. These books represent a variety of ideas we’re excited to explore more deeply in the coming year. Whether you read one or all, we hope they inspire fresh insight and thoughtful conversation. Also, several books were chosen with short reading times in mind, so whether you find yourself with one minute or ten to read, we hope you'll find something to nourish your soul.
~ The CMI & Alveary Teams
Gospel Meditations to Unburden Your Anxious Soul
The Way of the Wildflower
For the days when you need to slow down and consider the wildflowers. These short reflections pair Scripture with Ruth Chou Simons’ beautiful botanical artwork and reminders of God’s care.
An Invitation to Poetry for the Church
Word Made Fresh*
Van Engen lays out a beautiful relational approach to poetry which resonates deeply with Mason. As he models a love for poetry and gives insights into how to enjoy, understand, and read poetry (or start on the journey!), we continue growing in our own delight.
*Included in Alveary Poetry Study (Grades 10-11)
Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World
The Life We're Looking For
A deeply reflective primer on creating meaningful connections, rebuilding abundant communities, and living in a way that engages our full humanity in an age of unprecedented anxiety and loneliness.
Illustrated Poetry, Prose, and Praise
A Treasury of Nature
A book to linger over. Poetry, prose, hymns, and art come together in short readings that invite you to notice the beauty of creation and turn your attention toward its Creator.
Charlotte Mason's Living Method of Learning
Narration and Retelling
This short book discusses the way Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason’s implementation of narration has stood the test of time. The principles Mason articulated in her volumes were based on the conception of the learner as an active participant striving to make meaning of their world. Mason overturned the teacher-centered paradigm of education and handed the responsibility of learning back to the students. All those practices that were once done by the teacher—asking questions, keeping students’ attention, and explaining the readings—were taken up by the students in the act of narration. Through examining the research literature about retelling, narrative form, and oral cultures, Whiteside confirms the insights Mason had about the importance of children learning through narrative or literary form. Using her own research in a fifth-grade classroom, she also adds a fresh perspective on narration that emphasizes the storytelling aspects of it. This shift from narration as a reading comprehension exercise to narration as a creative activity helps students see themselves as storytellers who must craft their retelling in a way that is faithful to the text but allows their perspective and personality to shine through. This practice brings together both reason and imagination so that knowledge engages the mind and heart.
A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from the Arts
Redeeming Vision
This book invites educators of all levels and high school students to take the next step in deepening their relationship with art. By contemplating a theology of art as viewers, Dr. Weichbrodt shows how art impacts how we see as well as how we are and how we love.
A Scheme of Magnificent Unity
The Great Recognition
Within these pages Van Pelt and Malucci delve into the detail and relevance of Charlotte Mason’s Great Recognition. Seeing the struggles of parents raising children in an age of progress, rapid change, and secularization, Mason gave a vision for a life that could both embrace the challenges they faced and transcend them. In Parents and Children, Mason wrote about her Great Recognition which was inspired by a fresco in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy, that she encountered while on tour in 1893, guided by John Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence along with art critic and friend, Julia Firth. The Great Recognition offered an idea that “resolves the discord in our lives of which most of us, more or less, are aware” (Mason, 1896/1989, p. 274). In this short book Van Pelt and Malucci contextualize Mason’s Great Recognition, identify and explore many of the components within the fresco, and then discuss the implications of her insights for education in her time and ours.
Why and How to Study History
A Little Book for New Historians*
Robert Tracy McKenzie offers a concise, clear, and beautifully-written introduction to the study of history. Loaded with concrete examples and insightful principles, this primer shows how the study of history, faithfully pursued, can shape your heart as well as your mind.
*Included in Alveary World History (Grade 9)
Bonus
Choose a Book of Your Choice from an Alveary High School Course*
*Doesn't have to be a high school course. Our team enjoys reading the Grade 1 books for themselves often equally as much as the Grade 12 ones.
