Books That Spark Joy: A Chat with Sarah Mackenzie

Homeschool Better Together with Pam Barnhill

Pam Barnhill

Kids & Family, Christianity, Education, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of the Homeschool Better Together Podcast features a delightful conversation with Sarah Mackenzie from the Read Aloud Revival. Sarah and I chat about rekindling the joy of reading for ourselves as moms. We explore the power of quitting books that don’t spark joy, the fun of keeping a reading log, and how to find books that truly resonate with you. Plus, we dive into reading challenges—are they motivating or just another checklist? Spoiler: we both have strong opinions!

We also talk about Sarah’s exciting projects with Waxwing Books, including a middle-grade fantasy novel perfect for family read-alouds. If your reading life needs a little inspiration or you're searching for the perfect book list, this episode is packed with ideas and encouragement to get you turning pages again.

Key Takeaways:

Rekindle your love for reading by giving yourself permission to quit books that don’t excite you.
A simple reading log can help you reflect on and savor what you’ve read.
Waxwing Books’ upcoming middle-grade fantasy, Beyond Mulberry Glen, is an excellent family read-aloud.
Reading challenges can be fun if approached with flexibility—don’t let them feel like a burden.

Key Resources:

For full show notes and a transcript of today’s episode, head to pambarnhill.com/hsbt27

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again?
0:05.4	Do you long for support as you learn alongside your kids?
0:10.3	Welcome to Home School Better Together, a podcast about building a homeschool experience that works for your family.
0:18.2	I'm Pam Barnhill, and it's time to step out of the overwhelm and
0:22.0	into the wonder. Let's do this. Hello, hello, I am joined today by the delightful
0:33.6	Ms. Sarah McKinsey from the Read Aloud Revival podcast and read aloud Revival.com.
0:39.6	And Sarah, I wanted to have you on to talk to you just a little bit about books, what you've been reading.
0:45.9	And to share a story with you, did you know that you completely re-inspired my reading life?
0:53.2	Okay, what?
0:58.1	First of all, I'm always going to talk about books. You know this, like my favorite thing ever, but I need to hear this story. Yeah, so it was like over a year
1:03.1	ago now, right? You had a mother's reading retreat. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for Read Aloud Revival. And you did
1:10.1	this in September, right? August. August. I think it was August. I think it was August. Yeah. And I thought that sounds like so much fun. And so I attended the retreat. I just kind of like snuck into the little rooms and listened to all the stuff that was going on and just had a blast. And you guys
1:28.9	talked about just books and reading journals. So I jumped on that bandwagon for a while and did
1:35.0	reading journals. But it also inspired me to revitalize my local book club. Oh, how fun. Yes. So we had not met since 2020, you know, that year.
1:48.5	And so I reached out to some ladies from church. And I'm like, hey, do you want to come and join me?
1:56.3	And they did. And now we have like nine ladies who meet every single month to talk about books that
2:02.7	we're reading. That's so fun. Who picks the books? Like do you pick them or do you rotate or how does
2:06.7	it work? Oh, no. I don't pick them. So I'm like the administrative person, right? So I like set up the
2:11.8	group me and and stuff like that. But we pick them as a group. So. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, and we have like a couple of really
2:20.5	voracious readers. And this is like the really cool thing. You never know who's going to be sitting like
2:25.0	across the pew from you in church who is a huge reader. Because we don't always just like talk about
2:33.0	books or something all the time. And some of these
	...

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