Tag: book list

Books featuring homeschoolers

Posted on by Suki

Like other kids, homeschoolers can be inspired by seeing themselves in fiction. The problem is that many of the depictions of homeschoolers in mainstream fiction depend on misinformation and depict homeschoolers as two-dimensional. The books on this list all show more well-rounded depictions of homeschool life.

Some of them are older books from before the time when homeschoolers were considered unusual. Many are more recent, positive depictions of kids living modern homeschooling lives. Please leave other suggestions in the comments below. (I haven’t read all of these, so let me know if any don’t belong on this list.)

Hanna
My book, Hanna, Homeschooler, follows seven-year-old Hanna as she moves to a new town and makes new friends.

Young Readers (picture and chapter books):

Books about homeschoolers
“Please excuse my child from school. I’m a vampire, and she might be one, too.”

Middle Grade (8-13 years):

  • Almond, David: Skellig
  • Atkinson, Elizabeth: I, Emma Freke
  • Baranoski, Sheila: Cellular Spirits
    Eric Achak is a twelve-year-old unschooler who can see ghosts. He thinks he’s the only one who has this problem until he meets Mr. Francis, who not only can see them but has developed a ghost-catching app that sucks ghosts into cell phones.
  • Barnhill, Kelly: The Girl Who Drank the Moon
  • Bodett, Tom: Williwaw!
  • Burnett, Frances Hodgson: The Secret Garden
    Not really a book about homeschooling, but children in Victorian Britain didn’t always go to school, and it never seemed to be such a huge issue, as long as they were learning and thriving.
  • Cook, Kacy: Nuts
  • Cottrell-Bentley, Lisa: Wright on Time series (click here for all books published by Lisa’s company, Do Life Right, which focuses on books about homeschoolers)
  • Forester, Victoria: The Girl who could Fly
  • Frank, Lucy: The Homeschool Liberation League
  • French, S. Terrell: Operation Redwood
    The homeschool family in this book is just a tad stereotypical (back to the land hippies), but they are lovely characters and as role models, impeccable.
  • Hannigan, Katherine: Ida B… and her plans to maximize fun, avoid disaster, and (possibly) save the world
  • Hatke, Ben: Mighty Jack
  • Hawes, Louise: Big Rig
    This is the very best depiction of roadschooling I’ve ever read in a kids’ book, hands down. On the homeschooling front, I absolutely can’t fault this book—4 stars, 2 thumbs up. However, I only recommend this book with reservations. I have serious concerns about letting kids think that a teen girl hitchhiking alone at a truck stop would end up OK. And a book about trucking that doesn’t point out its contribution to the climate crisis at this point seems really dated. So… lots of great conversation for homeschoolers here! But I wouldn’t recommend it as solo reading lest your kid think that girls who frequent truck stops and try to sweet talk truckers are not making a (dangerous, illegal) business of it.
  • Key, Watt: Alabama Moon
  • Kilbride, Susan: Our America series
  • Kleinman, Liza: Azalea, Unschooled
  • Korman, Gordon: Schooled
  • LaFevers, R.L.: Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
  • Law, Ingrid: Savvy
  • Leali, Michael: The Civil War of Amos Abernathy
    Two boys—one homeschooled the other in school, one in a conservative church and one in a liberal church—are gay. When they meet up in a historical reenactment park, their friendship helps them learn more about history and about themselves.
  • Mass, Wendy: Every Soul a Star
  • Morpurgo, Michael: Kensuke’s Kingdom
  • Palacio, R.J.: Wonder
    I love this book but recommend it with reservations: Homeschooling has clearly not harmed the main character, who is smart, well-educated, and socialized (as well as a boy with a scarily deformed face can be socialized). But the references to homeschooling are somewhat negative in that they imply that because his mother is “not good at fractions,” she can’t homeschool him anymore. Heck, you don’t have to be good at fractions to homeschool kids anymore, especially if you have enough money to send them to private school! I say read it with your kids and ask them whether they think homeschooling was depicted fairly.
  • Patterson, James: Treasure Hunters
  • Peterson, Stephanie Wilson: Nellie Nova Takes Flight
  • Riordan, Rick: The Kane Chronicles (starts with The Red Pyramid)
  • Selden, George: The Genie of Sutton Place
  • Selznick, Brian: Wonderstruck
  • Stead, Rebecca: Liar & Spy
  • Tolan, Stephanie: Surviving the Applewhites and Applewhites at Wit’s End
  • Wheeler, Patti: Travels of Gannon and Wyatt
Like many gentlemen of his era, young Victor Frankenstein was homeschooled.

Young Adult (13+):

  • Carter, Ally: I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You
  • Hubbard, Susan: The Society of S
    I enjoyed this book, which is quite well-written. The main character is the daughter of a vampire and a human who is kept in 19th-century style seclusion due to her “condition”—she may be a vampire like her father. Her father is distant but loving and she gets a fine classical homeschool education. Although the theme of this book is lovely—finding family and love—it does contain some grisly murders and wouldn’t be appropriate for younger kids.
  • Johnson, J.J.: This Girl Is Different
  • Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
    I reread this recently and I was surprised to see that Atticus and his brother “never went to school.” Atticus is a lawyer, his brother is a doctor. When Scout first goes to school, the teacher tells her that “your daddy taught you wrong” because she could already read. Scout is mighty confused at this, as she could read for as long as she could remember. Not a book about homeschooling, but the message about the damage that school and bad teachers can do is loud and clear.
  • Mull, Brandon: Beyonders: A World Without Heroes
  • Oppel, Kenneth: This Dark Endeavor and sequels
    I have only read the first of this series. It portrays young Victor’s education as rather more lacking than the original Frankenstein (see Shelley below). It’s not anti-homeschooling, but it does point out the problem that can arise when a parent simply isn’t interested in an entire field of study and doesn’t guide his son’s studies in that area.
  • Rudnick, Paul: It’s All Your Fault
  • Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
    Similar to The Secret Garden, this book hearkens back to a time and place when schooling was not the only way to learn. Young Victor Frankenstein and his cohorts do OK, though Victor does have a bit of a problem with the question of whether it’s moral to create a new life and then abandon it. Apparently, Daddy forgot to teach that high school class on ethics.
  • Sloan, Holly Goldberg: I’ll Be There
  • Spinelli, Jerry: Stargirl

Book list for pre-teen gifted readers

Posted on by Suki

Pre-teen gifted readers often run into a problem around the age of ten: as younger children they read everything in children’s literature that they could get their hands on. By the time they reach ten years old, they’re starting to run into roadblocks when looking for appropriate books. Some ten-year-olds are ready to go on to Young Adult fiction, but most aren’t. Young Adult, with its focus on teens’ changing bodies and questioning of their place in the world, is often inappropriate and sometimes very upsetting for “tweens” who have outgrown children’s books but are looking for meaty reading to satisfy their literary cravings.

The list below contains books recommended for this demographic. In general, recommended books will not contain violence described in a visceral way, though books that very sensitive readers might want to avoid are starred. If you have recommendations for this list, please leave them in the comments below.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

See also:

Resources:

Reading list for your gifted young reader

Posted on by Suki

There is a lot of understanding these days about finding appropriate books for emerging readers. An entire new genre has even sprung up for struggling older readers who want something more mature than Amelia Bedelia. But there’s a problem on the other side of the spectrum for kids who read early. It’s not uncommon for an early reader to reach five years old and hit a wall: a lack of books at a higher reading level that are still appropriate for a five-year-old. Even though these children may be able to read Harry Potter, they may not be ready for the Young Adult intensity of the later books in the series.

The following books have been vetted by moms with children in this age group who are voracious readers. Asterisks denote books that may have difficult content for very sensitive readers. If you have additions, please leave them in the comments below. But make sure that the additions follow these rules:

  • No direct violence
  • If deaths of parents, pets, siblings or others are mentioned, please add a note
  • Complex enough reading for a five-year-old reading at a higher level

List:

See also:

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Resources:

Accidental favorites

Posted on by Suki

If homeschoolers were living up to our name, you might think we spend a lot of time at home. However, the opposite usually ends up being true. We are out and about, going to clubs and classes, our homeschool program, and on fieldtrips.

This results in a lot of time for my kids to argue in the car. And argue they do, unless, I have found, something else is occupying their brains.

The best thing I’ve found is audiobooks. Unfortunately, we seem to need a steady supply, and unless I have been doing my homework, ordering books from the library ahead of time, we find ourselves about to embark on a roadtrip, bookless.

The last two books we listened to were found in this way: we’d run out of books, and I had to make do with what I could find that day. One day, we were at our homeschool program and I happened to look on the books on CD shelf. There was a book I’d never heard of before, A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. It looked promising, so I checked it out and popped it in.

One of the problems we’ve been having lately is that my kids like big, meaty books, but aren’t so fond of scary books. As you move past the kids’ classics and get into the middle grade and teen fiction, a lot of it gets way too exciting and full of stories more scary than we are interested in. A Single Shard is an example of what can be done with a sweet, historically based story. Though it has no blood-sucking vampires, no evil villains, and no end-of-the-world scenario, the book is powerful and fully gripping.

A Single Shard
A Single Shard

In the book, a young orphan is being raised by a homeless cripple under a bridge in medieval Korea. The orphan is awed by the work of the local potters, who are famous across the land for their celadon glaze. Through a mishap, he ends up needing to work for an elderly master potter to repay a debt, and becomes his helper.

The book is rich with historical details woven seamlessly into the stories. I believe that my children and I learned more about historical Korea just by listening to that book than we have about historical Japan in the studying we’ve been doing. (Can anyone recommend a similar book set in Japan?) On top of that, the book had a moral lesson. When the main character is about to embark on a long, arduous journey, the man who has raised him tells him that sometimes, a closed door leads us to find an open door. It’s a tiny bit of wisdom that takes on great significance in the book.

I recently reviewed the book Some of my Best Friends are Books, which is such a great read. One of the things that the author says is how important it is for kids to learn from fiction. She points out that books can act as therapy, teaching kids lessons in ways that really stick in their brain.

Can there be a better lesson than this? A loss often leads to an opportunity. In the case of A Single Shard, the opportunity is small. Our hero doesn’t become world-famous, rich, or even well-known enough to pass his name to the present. His work was anonymous; his identity is lost. But in writing this book, Park shows how much meaning a life can have, if only a boy does not give up on his quest.

The next time we were left without an audiobook, we had time to stop at the library. I never know what’s going to be there, though I can be sure of a few things:

  • All the books on CD that we’ve already listened to will be available for checkout
  • Lots of second, third, and fourth books in series will be available
  • Most of what’s left will be for little kids, teenagers, or in a language we’re not studying at the moment.

At this stop, however, there was one book that didn’t fit in those categories. It didn’t look too scary. It wasn’t part of a series. (I later found out it was the first in a series, though.) And we had never heard of it. Trusting the staff of SCPL, I checked it out.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel was completely unfamiliar to me. The description sounded promising, though it had very little information. We popped it in and were immediately sucked in.

The story takes place in a sort of alternate universe — like His Dark Materials, but much less dark and scary. In this version of Earth, a compound called Hydrium has been discovered, and Victorian-age peoples have taken to the air. Our hero is not much of a hero yet. Matt is just a cabin boy on a luxury sky-ship.

What I loved about this book was the slow, Victorian-age pacing. I am reading Oliver Twist to my 11-year-old right now, and Airborn has the same easy pace. “Don’t worry,” the book seems to say. “Your world is all in a rush, but this one drifts with the air currents.”

Nothing happens all in a rush. We have time throughout the book to experience things as our protagonist does: through his senses and his emotions. This isn’t a perfect book, but it’s more than good enough. The flights of imagination are superb. I can almost feel the whoosh of the cloud-cat’s wings as it flies past me.

Like A Single Shard, there is no gratuitous excitement here. This book is exciting, however, and there is violence. One of the main characters is killed, but his death is properly mourned, and the meaning of his death — a young man’s life has been ended before he had the chance to find out his purpose in life — is made clear. This is a very moral book, which I appreciated. Our hero is Errol Flynn, not Steven Segal.

My kids and I sat in the car a few times, unwilling to stop the book and go in. In the end, I relented and brought the CD in to listen inside. We just couldn’t leave our hero hanging out in the car while we went on gaily with our lives!

Certainly, I’ve not had 100% luck in random audiobook choices, but these experiences reminded me that there are so many great books out there. You just have to be willing to try something new and unknown. And be willing to jump ship if it turns out not to be the journey you had hoped.

A Parenting Book List

Posted on by Suki
People who know me know that I’ve had my share of challenges with my kids. They are both very bright in a book-learnin’ sort of way, which means that I seldom worry about things like test scores. In fact, I’m sure I’ll write at some point about my search for schools that are academically rigorous but don’t stress testing as the end product of learning.
What I don’t want to do with this blog is get into my kids’ personal lives too much. I’ve seen other parents do that and I think it does a disservice to the kids. But last week at a party someone was asking me about resources I’ve run across, and I thought it would be a good idea to write a sort of book (and website) review of materials that might be helpful to other parents.
From their earliest times, I have been interested in figuring out how to help my highly sensitive little people negotiate the world. A book that has some really great advice is The Highly Sensitive Child (isbn 0767908724). I’ve never found that sticking my kids into a category really worked for them or us, but this book applies even if you don’t want to pigeon-hole your child as “highly sensitive.” It has some really great common-sense advice for dealing with your children’s sensitivities — not coddling them but finding techniques to help them succeed in a world that is full of stimulation that they might not appreciate.
Advice I appreciated from this book included helping non-highly-sensitive family members understand the difference between coddling your child and helping them learn to live with their sensitivities. I also liked the emphasis on finding the positive side to something that may seem all negative. When you can’t go out in public with your two-year-old because you don’t know if he’ll freak out at any unexpected loud sound, it’s easy to be negative. But the book helped me to appreciate and even draw on my children’s sensitivities.
The Out-of-Sync Child (isbn 0399531653) is to a certain extent a general manual on child-rearing. What child hasn’t been out of sync in their abilities at any given age? I have tried not to “pathologize” this in my kids as much as possible — I fully expect that an “out of sync” child will go in and out of being in sync his or her entire childhood (and possibly further). But again, whether or not I view a child has having a disorder or just having some challenges that are discussed in the book, the book can be helpful.
My homeschooled daughter benefits from my having read this book every day. I keep reminding myself that it’s OK that she’s not particularly good at certain skills, and that pushing her won’t help. As a strong-willed person, she reminds me when I’ve forgotten and I start to push her. She pushes back… hard! The skills that she lacks are ones that we need to work on, but she’s happier when we work on them slowly and in a positive way. And all the work we do on the things that don’t come easily to her has to be overbalanced with lots of fun doing the things she excels at.
The Mislabeled Child (isbn 9781401302252) is one that I happened upon at a particularly difficult time in parenting one of my children. It taught me to question the wisdom of lumping children into categories rather than looking at them as individuals. The professionals I liked working with were ones who were willing to admit that labels are convenient but not necessarily “real.” Every child can go in and out of displaying symptoms of various disorders, even if they’re perfectly normal. (Someone I know called me in distress one day because her child’s preschool teacher had suggested she get him evaluated for autism. The suggestion was based on the fact that he flapped his hands like an autistic kid when he was excited!)
In The Mislabeled Child they show how often behaviors can be misunderstood: a partially deaf child is labeled learning-impaired, a gifted child is labeled ADHD, etc. While dismissing the use of drugs as a cure-all for behavioral problems, the authors provided an entire chapter on the drugs available and what their effects and side-effects are. That chapter on drugs really made me think about how easily our culture falls back on drugs as a simple cure-all, and helped me take a firm stance in my own situation.
In the midst of a very difficult parenting year last year I wrote an article on PVUSD’s GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program, run by the talented Lyn Olson. GATE is the bewildered step-child of the California public schools. (You can read the article on my website, sukiwessling.com/familystories.html.) Lyn led me to an amazing website, http://sengifted.org, which serves as a virtual library of information for helping a gifted child stay mentally healthy.
I could write more, but I’m just about to hit my maximum word count! Good luck in your parenting journey…

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