You can't judge a book by its cover

Now that I've exhausted our library's classics shelf, I started on my list of instructional and spiritual books. One book that my mom has been encouraging me to read is called The Mother at Home by Reverend John S.C. Abbott. But ours isn't as pretty as the one featured below. Ours is an unattractive green paperback that was printed in 1989. It has a picture of a mother and young girl (also green) reading a book at a table dressed in 80's clothes and hairstyles. Bleck. Needless to say, I was surprised when I started reading it and it sounded nothing like a book written in the 80's. A few chapters in, I flipped to the front and found out why. This book was written in 1833.



No wonder I liked it so much. It was written in one of my favorite time periods for literature!

The Mother at Home is an amazing book that is chock full of wisdom. It's kind of like reading proverbs. You have to take it one chapter at a time with breaks in between or you'll get information overload! Surprisingly, a lot of the issues Abbott talks about still apply today. As a babysitter, I get to observe a lot of children that have some of the problems Abbott talks about. In his book, Abbott paints pictures of quiet, well-behaved children, and then he depicts chaotic scenarios that describe many modern day homes. (Apparently, parents in the 1800's had the same problems parents today have!) His writing is organized, to-the-point, and he uses illustrations and examples drawn from his own observations and experience. A must read...