Here is my secret. The secret to my success.

I google “Best Children’s Picture Books.” Tons of people write blog posts about that. Then I read through hundreds of descriptions, and if I think we’ll like them, I’ll go to my library’s website and request the book.

You can specify a date for the hold to start. So I’ll request five or ten using the current date, and then add seven days to the current date, and request five or ten more.

Then, I get several emails every week telling me I have the best children’s books in the world waiting for me 5 minutes away.

I go on Saturdays with or without the kids. Of course they prefer to come because our library has lots of toys and games. Way more than I remember other libraries having. But we can never leave the library without checking out twenty or thirty books. I’ve been this way my entire life. It’s a blessing. And a curse.

I’ve never lost a book–yet. I think it’s because we have tidy time every day. And when I think it takes too long to clean up, I donate toys. After every purge, the kids still manage to entertain themselves.

Back to books.

When Heidi was obsessed with princesses, I checked out every book on blog posts called “best princess books.” There were some really good ones.

Princess books

Then Peter became interested in Tangrams, and I checked out every book with “Tangram” in the name. We have two really awesome books right now with thousands of puzzles in them. And more to come every week.

And now it’s fairies for Heidi. I’ve got fairy books scheduled to come every week until the end of May. There are A LOT of books in the Disney Fairy series, so we could have them coming until the fall, probably.

We believe in following passions. Because you can’t compete with people who love what they are doing. Who can’t stop thinking about it. Who do it in their free time. That’s why Bryan, with his degree in Mechanical Engineering is now coding websites, and partially why I am homeschooling.

So go scout out your library’s website and give your future self high fives!