Children's Picture Books

From Vintage Novels:

Let's talk about picture books! A few months ago, two friends asked me if I could recommend any good picture books for children. They explained that it seemed many picture books today are either badly written, badly drawn, or both. I sat down and soon came up with this quick list--missing many classics, no doubt, but containing all our favourites, and some others I've heard recommended:

Click here to read the list

Open Book Reviews

Here's a wonderful resource for book reviews (written by a home educated student!) :

Welcome to Open Book Reviews! I hope you find a treasure-trove of helpful information as you seek good, living books for you and your family. My desire is that the reviews here will save you time and energy as you search for good literature as well as school curriculum.

I pray this book review site will make good use of my love of books and help you make better decisions about your family library.

Click here to visit Open Book Reviews

Ballantyne Book Review: "The Pioneers" and "Fast in the Ice"

Ballantyne the Brave is an inspiring site dedicated to the works of Ballantyne and G.A. Henty and is especially a wonderful resource for young men.

Click here to read a book review of R.M. Ballantyne's The Pioneers & Fast in the Ice (Both books contained in one volume).

Click here for even more book reviews.

For another introduction to the works of Ballantyne click here.

Note: I was quite interested to read that Ballantyne's books concentrate more on geography, whereas Henty's books are geared more towards history. What a perfect combination!

Curriculum Reviews

Here is a link to some wonderfully informative curriculum and book reviews (grouped by subject) from two experienced homeschool mothers: Marvelous Mondays. I very much enjoyed these and found them to be a great help. Highly recommended!

Holling C. Holling Homeschooling Helps: Paddle to the Sea

If you are looking for a good study on the Great Lakes, Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling is a treasure. Paddle-to-the-Sea is a little wooden Indian in a canoe, carved by a young boy up north in Canada. Paddle is sent on a journey to the ocean and the story follows him as he travels through each of the Great Lakes (and has many adventures along the way!). Full of wonderful details, drawings and information on the areas surrounding each lake, this book was much enjoyed in our home. Though it's been a year since we read it, the children have still retained quite a bit of what they learned.

Here are a few free online resources to go along with the book:

Paddle-to-the-Sea with Google Earth: "An exciting new program that uses the travels of Paddle to link real-time Great Lakes data to Google Earth’s mapping application. Tracing the path of Paddle's journey to the sea, it includes themes, key words, and Web sites for each chapter of the book." Click here for more information and to download

Paddle-to-the-Sea Film on YouTube: I saved this old film until we finished the book. While it did leave out many details it was still enjoyable, and it was neat for the children to see little Paddle on the big lakes.

Geography and Paddle-to-the-Sea: This is a helpful post from a homeschooling mother on how she used Paddle with her children.

Living Books With Science and Geography: Holling C. Holling

From Living Books With Science and Geography:

"Charlotte Mason advocated using living books in all of our studies. I love the idea and agree that our children should always read excellent books filled with creativity, challenging vocabulary, and firsthand accounts that will spark their imagination. So when it came time to introduce a new subject (Geography) to my children this year, I started looking for a good living book to add into our curriculum. I discovered an entire series that can be added into Geography and Science by Holling. " Click here to read the rest of this helpful post

We are great fans of Holling C. Holling's book and hope to collect them all. I consider them high on my priority list for our family library! :-) They are beautifully illustrated and packed full of information written in an interesting story form. They have been reprinted and are available from Christian Book Distributors . I love to collect antique and vintage editions of books if possible and older copies of Holling's books are usually readily available at reasonable prices on Ebay or from used booksellers.

Edited to add: Though Holling's books were written many years ago and do contain the values of an older era, his books are not written from a distinctively Christian perspective and therefore they do contain an occasional reference to evolution or promote another worldview in a positive way. I have not read them all, so I'm not sure how much of a problem this is in all of his books. In the books I have read these things were very few and easily edited out or discussed with the children. I try to be extremely careful both with the books I read to my children and those I recommend to others. The Holling books I have read have been excellent for the most part but please do use discernment and caution as you read all of his books.

Books for Independence Day

Being able to read book reviews by other mothers had been an immense help to me in deciding how to best spend my money. I hope to link to many of those reviews here, as well as post some of my own. On that note here is a helpful review by Copperswife on reading for the 4th of July: Our Favorite Reads for the 4th of July