If you’ve never bitten into a perfectly ripe, freshly harvested, juicy peach, you are missing out. Grocery store peaches — mealy and bland — simply do not compare.
When the Lord saw fit to move my family from the land of peaches (the Deep South) to the desert side of Washington state, he graciously provided a peach tree in my yard. In my yard! I looked forward to peach gluttony for a full year, but to my dismay, when harvest season arrived, the peaches were unremarkable. What was the secret?
Cultivating a fruitful peach tree requires care and provision from day one, and we had a lot to learn. Our peach tree was beyond the staking stage, but we learned to stake our other young trees in the beginning so they would grow straight and strong. Additionally, trees must be regularly pruned to foster strong trunks and central branches, prevent disease, and maintain the optimum overall shape of the tree.
In short, if we want a tree that is strong and fruitful at maturity, we must cultivate it carefully when it is young.
Similarly, to raise strong, fruitful, mature readers, we must cultivate a child’s discernment and imagination through Truth and Story while they are young.
Our team at Redeemed Reader believes strongly in this mission. Our 2025 book “The Redeemed Reader” includes the subtitle, “Cultivat[ing] a Child’s Discernment and Imagination through Truth and Story.” The book’s cover depicts a fruitful tree growing out of a book.
Not only does the tree image make for a beautiful book cover, it hints at our primary goal when reading with our children. We do not read with our children simply because we like reading, we want to help our children be better students, or we want the prestige of a child reading “The Hobbit” at age 9.
Why read with our children?
We read with our children because it is a great way to cultivate their discernment and imagination. We are created in God’s image; part of that image-bearing includes our human rationality and creativity, both of which are under assault in our contemporary culture. Spoiler alert: both have been under assault since the serpent first made Eve question God’s instructions. Ecclesiastes reminds us there is nothing new under the sun.
Reading to and with our children lets us engage directly with the young hearts and minds in our home. We all respond to Story. Much of the Bible is just that: a story (a true story, to be sure, but a narrative nonetheless). Jesus taught in stories (parables). Our pastors often sprinkle in stories as illustrations in sermons. Advertisers, social media experts, and even textbooks use stories. Stories are everywhere because they work to engage hearts and minds.
At Redeemed Reader, we make a distinction between Story (with a capital “S”) and story (with a lower-case “s”). Capital-S Story is well-crafted, engagingly presented, and memorable. Most of us would agree that “The Hobbit” is a better Story than the latest pop culture knockoff.
We also make a distinction at Redeemed Reader between Truth (with a capital “T”) and truth (with a lower-case “t”). Capital-T Truth reflects the world as God made and ordained it, points to our need for redemption, and offers real hope, even if the book in question does not present these as biblical ideas or use any sort of religious language. An obvious example is “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
As we write in our book, “Story, at its core, reflects the experience of the human condition, while Truth within the Story points to God’s ultimate reality.”
Our goal as parents and educators is to raise readers who can recognize Truth and delight in Story. The better our children can discern Truth and enjoy its memorable presentation in Story, the more fruitful they will be. After all, our chief end is to love God and enjoy him forever, which surely involves our hearts and minds.
How do we read with our children?
If that’s the “why” behind engaging in reading with our children, how do we go about it?
Much like a young tree needs staking to help it grow strong and straight, we provide structure and stability for our young readers. Before a child can read independently, he or she can only listen to stories. At that stage, parents and caregivers are providing the “stakes” for this young reader. Choosing books that engage and delight, fostering reading as a habit, and interacting with stories are all stakes that help young readers grow straight and strong.
It is never too early to enjoy books with your children. It is also never too early to put a book aside or point out something that is not beneficial. Much like a gardener will adjust tree
stakes if the prevailing winds are pushing a tree in the wrong direction, we parent gardeners can offer corrections about the stories we are enjoying.
For instance, if we notice that many characters in the stories we read are unrepentantly hateful to their siblings and our own young child begins to display the same behavior, we have the ability — and responsibility — to choose different stories and talk about sin with our children.
Think of your conversations about stories as the strings attaching stakes to a young tree. And the very best stake to include is reading God’s Word in story Bibles, Bible story picture books, and the Bible itself.
As our children grow and read more on their own, the ways we cultivate their discernment and imagination shift. A time will come when we remove the stakes altogether, letting children choose more of their reading material. However, a thoughtful gardener still monitors the health of the tree. As parents, that looks like watching the fruit that a child is bearing (or not bearing). We look for uneven growth, or branches that are unhealthy and might need to be pruned.
John 15 uses this same imagery: the Lord prunes his followers so that we may bear more fruit. Small pruning snips might look like a conversation with a child about his or her reading diet; larger pruning may involve restricting reading material altogether or choosing to wait on a book until the child demonstrates more maturity.
Like young trees, our children are growing up in unique environments: siblings, parents, schooling, neighborhoods, and more all affect their growth and maturity. What is wise and helpful for one child might be unnecessary or even harmful for another. As trees need varying amounts of water, nutrients, sunshine, or protection from harsh elements, so our children need varying types of stories.
We do not want to avoid all challenging elements; trees grow strong partly when they face wind, cold, and drought. In like manner, “messy” books can yield profitable discussions, helping our children flesh out big ideas, develop compassion and understanding, and open doors of communication between parent and child.
We are not trying to shield young hearts and minds from all difficult stories. Instead we must determine whether the particular hearts and minds in our care are strong enough to benefit right now from a challenging book, or if we need to wait on or skip a title altogether.
Furthermore, our children are growing up in the 21st century and, for most readers of this piece, in the United States. How do our time and place affect what we read and how we cultivate discernment and imagination?
It means we need to read 21st century books. In addition to tried-and-true classics like “Little House on the Prairie” or “Make Way for Ducklings,” we also need to include books like “Last Stop on Market Street” or “Beti and the Little Round House.” Look around you: what do people look like in your community? What sorts of activities do your children’s friends enjoy? What books are in your local or school libraries?
God’s people have always been salt and light in their unique time and place. Daniel learned Persian literature (Daniel 1: 3-7); Esther would have looked like pagan royalty once installed in the palace, and Paul spoke intelligently to those at the Areopagus.
We are called to be set apart, but we are also called to love our neighbors. Reading books about people like those around us helps us build empathy and understanding, guides our insight into what the people around us are thinking, and expands our understanding of the key issues in our culture. Reading books about space exploration or video game design or simply a fun adventure in a modern city are also tools that help us cultivate our children’s discernment and imagination in today’s environment.
What does all of this look like in practice? We like to remind readers that there is only one required book: God’s Word. All others are optional. Our children’s hearts and minds trump all bestseller lists, recommended reading lists (no matter the source), and “reading levels.” Those are helpful tools in our gardening toolshed, but the most important guide for both us and our children is the Bible.
As parents, we pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance for us, and we pray for his work in our children’s hearts. We bravely go out in all weather to cultivate these young trees. That means we do the work of reading with and to our children (audiobooks in the car “count”!) and then talking about what we read together.
Just as the flowers on a peach tree are beautiful and the resulting fruit is a delight, so is reading an excellent Story full of Truth with our maturing children. As we read with our children, our hope is that they will become trees planted by Living Water, who bear fruit in season and whose leaves do not wither.
Betsy Farquhar is editor in chief of Redeemed Reader. She and her husband are active members at New Covenant PCA in Aiken, South Carolina.