Educating the Heart: Stories Can Inspire Virtue in Our Children

From “Anne of Green Gables” to “The Little House on the Prairie,” literature is a powerful tool for showing kids what it looks like to live a virtuous life.

Biba Kayewich

Let’s start with the fundamental idea that virtue can best be taught by example.

We can spell out character values like courage, kindness, and responsibility for the young, but unless they see those definitions in action, the words will have little meaning. Former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett described this disparity as “the futility of precept in the absence of example.” He then recounts this sadly ironic incident: “More than once I’ve been in schools where they are teaching a ‘virtue of the week.’ In one such school, the virtue of the week was honesty. There had been a test on honesty, and the teacher told me that she had had to prepare a second test because she had caught so many students cheating on the first.”

In the natural order of things, parents are the first to link Bennett’s precept with example. Mom and Dad’s behavior either reinforces or belies moral teaching. Teachers, coaches, youth group leaders, other relatives, and friends—all can become exemplars of good character for the young as well.

Along with these mentors are hundreds, even thousands, of others, silently awaiting a child’s touch to offer their lessons in virtue. These are the books, the works of imaginative literature, that can also give blood and breath to precepts.

Biba Kayewich

An Abundance of Riches

Recently, in the college library near my home, I happened across the “Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature: The Traditions in English.” Just a little over 3,000 tissue-thin pages, this book is, to say the least, hefty. Here, the visitor finds fairy tales and fables, primers and readers, poetry, short stories, and several complete works, including Mildred Taylor’s “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” Introductions to each section provide historical content and critical analysis.

One of these selections is taken from Sarah Fielding’s 1749 tale, “The Governess; or, Little Female Academy,” which is “the first full-length story written expressly for the amusement of girls.” The Norton editor tells us that Fielding “makes clear that her intention in writing a book for girls is to encourage them to find happiness through virtues.” The story, adds the commentator, is written “for girls about female friendship, community, moral development, and self-respect.”

This Norton anthology shines a light on two aspects of children’s literature. First, the sheer size of this opus reminds us of the enormous storehouse of good books available for our children and adolescents. Second, Fielding’s prefatory remarks to “The Governess” bring home the point that these good books supply top-notch living lessons in ethics and morals for the young, and, for that matter, for readers of all ages.

The Way It Works

Nursery rhymes, however nonsensical, establish a bond of trust and intimacy between the reader and the toddler. From there, the child moves to fables, fairy tales, and picture books, all of which can directly convey virtues for a lifetime. A sterling example would be that of an impoverished Tennessee girl who treasured Watty Piper’s “The Little Engine That Could.” For the rest of her life, whenever Dolly Parton became nervous about an appearance onstage, she would stand in the wings and recite that book’s mantra: “I think I can. I think I can.”

From there, it is but a skip and a hop to adolescent and teen classics like Edith Nesbit’s “The Railway Children,” Gary Paulsen’s “Hatchet,” Brian Jacques’s “Redwall” series, and Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” During my years of teaching seminars in literature to homeschoolers, I lost track of the number of high school girls who, in class or in passing, shared their love for the novels of Jane Austen or the “Anne of Green Gable” books and of the ways those books had influenced their perceptions of the world.

Parents have lots of help when it comes to selecting good books for their children. Years ago, when looking for reading material for my own children, Elizabeth Wilson’s “Books Children Love” was my go-to guide. In her Introduction, Wilson writes of the many advantages bestowed by reading, then adds this crucial observation: “Of even more significance are the moral and ethical (and often spiritual) values conveyed by books. When a child identifies with either a real or a fictional character who demonstrates courage, faith, honesty, determination, kindness, or any one of the qualities so important to nurture in a child’s own character, all those values are reinforced in the child’s consciousness.”

Parents and teachers seeking help in selecting such value-based books can turn to Wilson’s inventory, or to other guides like Gladys Hunt’s updated “Honey for A Child’s Heart” and its companion, “Honey for a Teen’s Heart.”

An Imprint on Heart and Character

Wilson sees literature as a way that moral values may be “reinforced in the child’s consciousness.” Sometimes, a story or a series may exhibit this power in extraordinary ways.

In the spring of 2024, Magdalen Fitzpatrick graduated from a private Catholic school, then took a gap year to help teach elementary school children in the school before heading off to college this fall. We met when she was working as a volunteer putting together a private subscription library for homeschoolers and others. She was there, as she said, “Because I like libraries.”

During our conversation, Magdalen explained that because of her younger siblings, her dad had read aloud “The Little House on the Prairie” books to the family six times and was now engaged in the seventh—readings which she described, incidentally, as “fascinating and exciting.”

Despite all her other reading, these books of prairie life remain her favorite. Second-place honors belong to Tolkien’s three-volume “Lord of the Rings,” which her father has read more than once to the family.

While it’s impossible to quantitatively measure the influence of these particular books on Magdalen’s heart and character, it’s safe to say that the imprint they’ve left behind is significant and indelible. Combine the adventures of the Ingalls family with those of Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Galadriel, Eowyn, and others, and you have received not only great entertainment, but an education for a lifetime in character.

Practicing for Real Life

On June 29, 1777, and despite his anxieties over the ongoing war with Britain, John Adams took time to write a letter to his wife Abigail, part of which concerned the education of their oldest son: “I am under no Apprehensions about his Proficiency in Learning. With his Capacity, and Opportunities, he can not fail to acquire Knowledge. But let him know, that the moral Sentiments of his Heart, are more important than the Furniture of his Head. Let him be sure that he possesses the great Virtues of Temperance, Justice, Magnanimity, Honour and Generosity, and with these added to his Parts he cannot fail to become a wise and great Man.”

All parents recognize the importance of providing children with the furniture of the mind: learning to read and the study of such subjects as history, science, and mathematics. Yet Adams reminds Abigail, and now the rest of us, of the greater importance of acquiring virtue through education.

The best of literature for the young provides this opportunity. Just as academics are a sort of gymnasium for the mind, fairy tales, stories, poetry, and more can be a practice field for the moral sentiments of the heart. From the comfort of a sofa, a young person can hear or read books like “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “Treasure Island,” “Charlotte’s Web,” and so many more, and, without even knowing it, be in training to meet the very real moral tests the world will someday throw at them.