Honey for a Teen’s Heart

Grown-up book #2 for 2025

“Honey for a Teen’s Heart: Using Books to Communicate with Teens” by Gladys Hunt and Barbara Hampton

I’m a huge supporter and proponent of family read aloud time. If you aren’t currently reading aloud with your family, I encourage you to give it a try. This book, and Honey for a Child’s Heart are wonderful resources to get started. I recommend reading Honey for a Child’s Heart first.

Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from this book:

• “What we are proposing in this book goes against this cultural grain. This book talks about reading and listening to each other, talking about ideas. It gives clues about how to do it. We believe it is possible to have a growing friendship with our children as they mature, rather than a growing alienation. Parents and teens, both profit from time spent in knowing each other and sharing feelings and ideas.”
• “My experience has been that when people read together, they share something of themselves and know each other in important ways that keep teens, respectful and caring. Family members bond together over great literature, and have a common treasure to draw on and discussing almost anything. Good books can show you your heart and your values. Books can illuminate life choices.“
• “We are not people who know all the answers; we are people who are committed to God, who does have the answers.”
• “Our contention in this book is that reading together provides opportunities for the discussions every family needs. Books are about someone else; that means we can look objectively at the characters’ choices and actions and discuss them. In addition, books delight, quicken the imagination, widen our world, and live in our hearts. Reading is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
• “We can strip the night of his armor, to reveal that he looks exactly like us, or we can try on the armor ourselves to experience how it feels. Fiction provides an ideal opportunity to try on the armor.” – C.S. Lewis
• “When people read together, they give each other a piece of their mind and a piece of their time, and that says a good deal about human worth.” pg 24
• “Stories often touch us deeply, leaving us wondering, sometimes feeling pain inside, or confusion. (That’s when it is good to know someone else who has read the same story or seen the same film.) We need to be aware that stories do affect us profoundly. They can change the way we think or feel and even the way we behave.” pg 54
• “Teens need adventure, and it is easier to handle through the pages of a good book than when it actually arrives. Afterward, if an adventure does happen to overtake us, somewhere in our subconscious mind we will be equipped to endure and handle it.” pg 89
• “Children like rituals; they like things their family does together, even older teens.” pg 103
• The second part of the book is a massive list of book suggestions.

Happy reading friends! 💕