We had to replace our water heater today. My dad was telling me that we could look into getting a tankless one if we wanted, which I wasn’t familiar with. I could have googled it, but The Way Things Work, which we’d just given my son for his birthday, was just as close within reach as my phone was. After a quick glance at the index, look at that—a visual of exactly what I wanted to see was right there.

We have endless information at our fingertips with a quick internet search, but “endless” isn’t always best. My brain thrives on simple answers I can find printed in the books that live in my home, not an AI-generated explanation or a long list of links to sort through. Could we learn to be content with less information sometimes?

Here’s to filling our home libraries with reference books and setting an example for our kids by using them to answer daily questions.