Book Review: Take it to Heart by Anne E White
Take It to Heart: Ten Ways of Looking at Charlotte Mason by Anne E. White
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I never really quite know what to say about Anne White’s books besides that fact that I find them absolutely brilliant. This book, Take It to Heart, is a series of interlocking, almost stream-of-conscience (yet intentional and conversational) essays that traverse ideas from poetry to literature to math to the latest Instagram inspiration – they are truly gleaned from “ideas in the air.” The word “interlocking” is imperative, because each chapter seems as though it could stand on its own, until you see the callbacks and links bringing ideas onward and upward through to fruition: learning is living; life is all living. The relationships are ties that bind. What a blessing that she can communicate them to us so clearly.
But it isn’t merely that she communicates her ideas, she generously leaves room for the reader’s own connections and relationships. She takes books and writers and authors that I’ve never even heard of, teases the idea-marrow out, shapes and presents them so I can not only see but say “Oh, yes, it’s like ____________” that, perhaps, she hasn’t heard of (although that seems unlikely) and she and I can have a mind to mind moment. My book is marked up – underlines, exclamation points, and relationships that I’ve made stuffed into the margins.
“It’s to surround students with ideas, given in forms that teach them to notice, listen, sift, sort, choose, act, and, finally, worship.” (pg 60) She says after exemplifying that very work for us in organizing a book. The lesson is not just in what she says, but how she says it: the finest, most durable plaits of ideas that won’t fall out when we hit the dance floor.
She is arranging and highlighting all of these “ideas in Anne’s air” to give us an unobstructed view and understanding of what Charlotte Mason was saying. She uses the metaphor of a funnel in this book; shrinking things down, but also widening the view beyond – I had never thought of using a funnel “upside-down” so to speak – we aren’t allowed to be myopic and see the small, but are given a wider, more expansive vision.
What this book does very very well is to take the CM jargon and buzzwords and tuck them away; instead, using new language so you don’t get bogged down. She’s giving old ideas new life by coming at them slant; she almost sneaks up on the ideas before you realize that maybe she’s talking about atmosphere, discipline, life, and the science of relations, let alone the Ways of Will and Reason.
On pg 54 she asks “Who are the people who have made you … think like nobody else?” Anne White is one answer for me (and, after reading this book, I suspect, like a poet, she’d prefer that I simply notice the peaches on the counter).
I was given an advance review copy with no expectations. I’ve already ordered it on Kindle and put a hard copy in my cart for my next order.
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