In today’s post, I’m rating several of my Montessori reads from the past several years. This includes what I consider Montessori recommended reading for any parents interested in her educational philosophy.
NOTE: When reading about Maria Montessori – as opposed to reading her own works – it’s important to know that “Montessori” is not copyrighted. Therefore, anyone can claim an idea or a material (or a school) is “Montessori” without any justification from Maria Montessori’s work.
These are the books that I recommend you…
Read Cover-to-Cover
Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three by Paula Polk Lillard
I’m going to admit I’m very biased here. When I was pregnant with my first child and buying ALL the books to answer the questions that were multiplying exponentially in my brain by the second, I came across this on Amazon and bought it on a whim. This was my first in-depth introduction to Maria Montessori and it forever changed my views on children, child development and education. I haven’t re-read it in a while, but I can say that for myself, it was life-changing.
The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori
After getting a good introduction with Lillard’s Montessori from the Start, I would hit the source. I would start with Maria Montessori’s most often cited work and then continue reading whatever you can get your hands on by the lady herself (easier said than done, unfortunately). But if you’re only going to read one book on this Montessori Recommended Reading list for parents, this should be it.
The Secret of Childhood and The Discovery of the Child by Maria Montessori
Combined, both of these books have the most dog-eared pages and highlighted sections of any book on education in my collection. And I’m a former classroom teacher, so that’s not a small amount of books. I find these two works to be completely fascinating. If you have any interest whatever in child development and education, these are incredibly interesting.
The Montessori Toddler: A Parent’s Guide to Raising a Curious and Responsible Human Being by Simone Davies
This is a beautifully illustrated book with a lot of ideas for enriching activities for the toddler years. I found it incredibly helpful and inspiring. It is the first – and I believe the best – of Simone Davies’ series entitled The Parent’s Guide to Montessori. If you wanted to gift someone an aesthetically pleasing, but not too shallow introductory book on Montessori, this would be my suggestion.
Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Pre-School Years by Elizabeth Hainstock
If you want to implement at some of the abundant information from Secret of Childhood and Discovery of the Child as opposed to just reading what feels like a scientific journal article, this is the book. A lot of Montessori books are so academic but this one is actually just activities (or “work”) organised by age with instructions for setting them up. And they are DIY-friendly. Once you start doing your research, you’ll find a lot of classic Montessori materials are beautiful but prohibitively expensive. This is a great little book if you want to start incorporating Montessori at home with your 2 to 5 year old.
Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius by Angeline Stoll Lillard
This was a really interesting book that used scientific studies to back up a lot of what Maria Montessori was implementing with her students at the beginning of the 20th century. If you want something like a defence of the Montessori method, this would be a great choice.
Skim for the Highlights
The Montessori Baby: A Parent’s Guide to Nurturing Your Baby with Love, Respect and Understanding by Simone Davies
If you’re interested in setting up a Montessori space for your baby from the beginning, this has some beautiful photographs and illustrations. It also goes into a significant level of detail about what kind of “toys” to use with your baby and why, including when to introduce them based on developmental milestones. This is the part I have bookmarked and have referenced most. I’m listing this as a book to skim because there is a lot of more general baby book content that isn’t necessarily helpful or Montessori specific, in my opinion.
Montessori: A Modern Approach and Montessori Today by Paula Polk Lillard
I’m grouping these two books together because I honestly have a difficult time differentiating them in my mind. I’m pretty sure they repeated each other quite a bit. That being said, they were succinct overviews of what makes the Montessori method unique and special. If you’ve read the books listed above from cover-to-cover as I recommended, these are only worth a skim due to redundancy, not quality or comprehensiveness.
Pass
The Montessori Child: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Capable Children with Creative Minds and Compassionate Hearts by Simone Davies
As the third book in the series, I had very high expectations for this instalment. And sadly, it just did not meet them at all. Compared to the other two books by the same author, I felt that this one was seriously lacking in quality content. Especially content that hadn’t already been covered in her other books.
How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin
Honestly, there is nothing wrong with this book. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t think it had anything of value to add if you have any knowledge of Maria Montessori and her work already. That being said, I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Montessori either because it is very shallow. By that, I mean that there is really no depth of explanation for the way things are done in Montessori environments. So I do not think it would be helpful for anybody with no background in Montessori either.
What is your recommended Montessori reading for parents? Are there any great ones I missed? I know I still have several ones on my TBR.
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