Like most homeschoolers I am obsessed with book lists. I remember when I first checked Rebecca Rupp's The Complete Home Learning Source Book out at the library and spent weeks pouring over it and compiling my own book lists by topic. I then proceeded to find every book list available online and add those books to my hand written lists. Eventually my paper pile of lists was several inches high. I finally decided to put the lists into Excel documents to eliminate some of the clutter from my desk (I am still not quite finished with this project). I put those lists into google docs and have them listed in my side bar.
Those of you that love booklists like I do will want to check out those lists. but let me tell you what I have recently realized: THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY BOOKS TO EVER USE THEM ALL IN OUR HOMESCHOOL.
Oh yes, I have left the library with huge stacks of books in my arms, including once when it was icy and I slipped and the 30 books I was carrying went flying across the parking lot. And I have spent hours reading all of those books to my kids. Many of these books were very good and others were just OK. So if we were learning about say, Cleopatra, I would come home with 5 books about Cleopatra. All of them had about the same information, so I didn't really need to read them all. Probably one would have been sufficent. But how to know which one to choose. After 6 years of doing this thing called homeschooling, I have come to recognize that there are some authors that consistantly write good books, so when faced with a choice I will always choose these authors.
Here are the authors that I love ( yes, it is another list...)
Diane Stanley
Franklyn M. Branley (for early science)
D'Aulaire
Besty Maestro
Kathleen Krull
Daivd Adler
Gail Gibbons
Ruth Heller
Aliki
Brian Cleary (grammar and math books)
Ann Rockwell
Melvin Berger (early science)
Stuart Murphy (math readers)
Loreen Leedy
Margaret Hodges
Mike Venezia
1 comment:
I really enjoyed this post. I, too, made the mistake of coming home from the library with a ton of books on one topic, most of which had the same info: we got at least 25 books on ancient Egypt, and of all of them, about 3 or 4 were good and presented new info.
I have a lot of booklists, but I find them overwhelming and don't look at them much, apart from the ones in WTM. I find author lists much more useful, too, so thanks for posting that one.
I've also developed a liking for certain series, like the 'you wouldn't want to be...' history series.
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