I've found even more online books and book lists!!

I’ve been collecting more online books and book lists to share…

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ The Making Of America

http://www.eclectichomeschool.org/resources/booklists/default.asp

a list of recommended books by subject with descriptions of the books

http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/schoolroom/onlinebooks.php

a list of sites with various online books for homeschool. This site also has other free homeschool resources.

http://www.fullbooks.com/ Lots of online books

http://www.monergism.com/free_online_books.php Online Christian books. (Luther, Calvin, Matthew Henry’s commentary, Foxes Book of Martyrs, Jonathon Edwards, Pilgrim’s Progress and others.)

http://www.blackmask.com/index.php Many online books in various formats. You don’t have to be a member to download books, though it looks like you do.

http://www.malaspina.org/home.htm Has literature by time period, subject and discipline and includes online “great books”.

http://eserver.org/ Iowa State University online literature program—classics to modern

http://www.truelightacademy.com/truth.html A nice list of recommended books by age level.

http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/ Oxford University online books and texts

http://www.bookpop.com Listen to children’s books online written by the author

http://www.bnl.com/shorts/ Classic short Stories

http://www.sonnets.org/ English Sonnets

http://www.hbook.com/booklists/default.asp Reviews and Recommendations for children’s and young adult literature

http://www.poets.org/ Search for Poetry and poets and also organized by state

More Free Online Books & Book Lists for Homeschooling

Once again I’m coming to you with lists of lists. I’ll say it again. I love lists! Several sites and books offer book lists which can be helpful in homeschooling. My children have become avid readers and it takes a long time to scour library bookshelves searching for good quality literature for your children and teens (especially teens!). So many books out there I find either offensive or lifeless or sugary-sweet—what I call candy for the brain. I find book lists to be a big help, then, in steering my children toward good books.

Let me say that these lists can be quite daunting. Some lists recommend books much younger than I think is appropriate, so I use the reading or age levels offered only as a guideline. I’ve tried out some books too early and have found my kids resistant, so I generally don’t force it. I’ve stopped reading the book, leaving it for another year—or month in some cases. Often, when they’re ready, they’ll find the book on their own and read it and enjoy it, or I can trust that they will one day if they want to. I’m realizing that there is a lot of quality literature and my children only need a sampling of it in their youth. They have their whole lives to discover and enjoy great literature. My goal is to not cause them to hate it because I force it on them. I want to lead them to the streams of living books to taste and enjoy. I want to foster their God-given thirst to learn, to read, to understand, to enjoy, to experience, and to relate. I have felt in the past that they needed to be knowledgeable in everything in order for me to have done a good job in educating them. I continually remind myself that my job is to lead them to the river and to show them how to get there on their own.

Well, more on all that another day. Here are some book lists I’ve found online. It must be that a lot of folks out there love lists. Some are specifically homeschool book lists, and some are meant to be used by librarians. Enjoy!

http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/ A list makers dream—A list of book lists!

http://www.allreaders.com/ Book reviews

http://nancykeane.com/rl/#Genres Book lists by genre

http://nancykeane.com/booktalks/default.htm Book reviews

http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000.html 1000 Good Books List for homeschoolers sorted by reading level and by author.

http://www.angelicum.net/html/the_good_books_in_print_list.html Compiled by John Senior (1923-99), late classicist professor at the University of Kansas

http://www.accelerated-achievement.com/800books.htm Another classical list.

http://www.bartleby.com/hc/ The Harvard Classics the Shelf of Fiction--One nice thing is that many of the works are on the website. Bartleby states about the Harvard Classics: “The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume ‘5-foot shelf of books’ and the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.”

http://www.bartleby.com/nonfiction/ This includes many anthologies of literature, historical documents, speeches, historical scientific documents and essays. All of barleby.com is worth checking.

http://classkc.org/goodbooks.php Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools See also: http://classkc.org/best.php This is an interesting site. This site lists great quality books and points out that most are not on the reading lists for students in their school district.

http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/history.htm Books to Supplement History—listed by time period.

http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/sciencebooks.htm Books to Supplement Science—listed by subject.

http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/movies.htm Movies to supplement history—listed by time period.

http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/easychapter.htm Easy Chapter Books—listed by title.

http://www.lib.muohio.edu/pictbks/ If you’re putting a unit study together or if your younger child is interested in a certain subject, you can search for picture books by subject here.

http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/awardsscholarships/literaryawds/literaryrelated.htm Here are book lists for books which have received literary awards. In my opinion, a literary award doesn’t necessarily mean that a book is high quality. It means that it met the standards for that award.

John Taylor Gatto--The Truth about Public Schools--or Reasons Why to Homeschool

"...‘How will they learn to read?’ you ask, and my answer is ‘Remember the lessons of Massachusetts.’ When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks, they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them."

– John Taylor Gatto

"It’s absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does..."
– John Taylor Gatto

Have you read these articles by John Taylor Gatto? They’re worth reading—and printing out to share! They will make you glad you’re homeschooling—or help you to decide to homeschool. I’m going to print some of them out to make them available for people who are thinking of homeschooling or who have relatives with objections to it.

I’ve found quite a few articles, several mp3’s to listen to while you browse the web and if you have lots of time on your hands, John Taylor Gatto’s latest book, The Underground History of American Education is online at his website at http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm . You can even take his History of Education Tour at http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm .

(For those you don’t know, John Taylor Gatto is a former award-winning school teacher from New York. He’s written some excellent books on education which address the problems of our public education--coming from a secular perspective and first hand experience.

The Six Lesson Teacher
http://www.afhe.org/resources/articles/gatto_the_six_lesson_schoolteacher.pdf

What an Educated Person Must Know
http://www.afhe.org/resources/articles/gatto_what_must_an_educated_person_know.pdf

Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech, 1990
http://www.afhe.org/resources/articles/gatto_teacher_of_year_speech_1990.pdf

The Nature of Public Education
http://www.homeschooloasis.com/art_john_taylor_gatto.htm

Dumbing Us Down The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/10-4article4.htm

What Really Matters, part 1
http://www.life.ca/nl/40/gatto.html

What Really Matters, part2
http://www.life.ca/nl/41/gatto.html

Why Schools Don’t Educate
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html

A Short Angry History of American Forced Schooling
http://4brevard.com/choice/Public_Education.htm

The Seven Lesson School Teacher
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
http://www.dvschool.org/psngatto.htm

Personal Solutions, Family Solutions
http://www.life.ca/nl/45/gatto.html

Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids and Why
http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

Absolute Absolution
http://www.spinninglobe.net/absolution.htm

We Need Less School Not More
http://www.spinninglobe.net/lesschool.htm

Institutional School Must Be Destroyed
http://www.spinninglobe.net/institsch.htm

Nine Assumptions of Schooling--and Twenty-one Facts the Institution Would Rather Not Discuss
http://www.spinninglobe.net/9assumptions.htm

Confederacy of Dunces: The Tyranny of Compulsory Schooling
http://www.spinninglobe.net/condunces.htm

The Underground History of the United States – You can read the whole book online here.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

Here are a lot of mp3’s of John Taylor Gatto’s lectures or interviews including “Outing School”, “A Schooling is Not an Education”, “The Paradox of Extended Childhood, Real Purposes of Schooling”, “The Guerilla Curriculum”, and more. These are put on by Radio Free School. Be sure and click on the symbol at the left to “download” to play in Quicktime.
http://www.altruists.org/downloads/by_subject/others/education/

70 Minute Interview with John Taylor Gatto
http://www.teachmeteamwork.com/teachmeteamwork/files/john_taylor_gatto_sm.mp3

Videos of John Taylor Gatto
http://www.edflix.org/gatto.htm

The Paradox of Extended Childhood mp3
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/multimedia/jtgsound_paradox.htm

Classics Illustrated Comic Books

I found something neat to share. My husband found some old comic books from a series called Classics Illustrated. Of course, I had to do a search online to find out more about them. They seem like a fun way to introduce children to the classics--especially reluctant readers. I found this site that has several that you can read online: http://www.tkinter.smig.net/ClassicsIllustrated/index.htm

There they have the following Classics Illustrated online comic books:

9. LES MISERABLES Victor Hugo

3. OLIVER TWIST Charles Dickens

26. FRANKENSTEIN Mary W Shelley

47. TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA Jules Verne

48. DAVID COPPERFIELD Charles Dickens

59. WUTHERING HEIGHTS Emily Bronte

76. THE PRISONER OF ZENDA Anthony Hope

95. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT Erich Maria Remarque

124. THE WAR OF THE WORLD SH G Wells

138. JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH Jules Verne

Junior #519 PAUL BUNYAN

Here’s a whole list of the Classics Illustrated from the same site. Some are not politically correct anymore—at least the title isn’t. Anyway, it seems like a good start to a list of books for our homeschooling high schoolers to be aquainted with.

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED COMIC BOOKS LIST

1. THE THREE MUSKETEERS Alexandre Dumas 2. IVANHOE Walter Scott 3. THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO Alexandre Dumas 4. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS James Fennimore Cooper 5. MOBY DICK Herman Melville 6. TALE OF TWO CITIES Charles Dickens 7. ROBIN HOOD 9. LES MISERABLES Victor Hugo 10. ROBINSON CRUSOE Daniel Defoe 11. DON QUIXOTE Miguel DeCervantes 12. RIP VAN WINKLE & HEADLESS HORSEMAN Washington Irving 13. DR JEKYLL & MR. HYDE Robert Louis Stevenson 14. WESTWARD HO! Charles Kingsley 15. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN Harriet Beecher Stowe 16. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS Jonathan Swift 17. THE DEERSLAYER James Fennimore Cooper 18. THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME Victor Hugo 19. HUCKLEBERRY FINN Mark Twain 20. THE CORSICAN BROTHERS Alexandre Dumas 21. THREE FAMOUS MYSTERIES Doyle-Poe-Maupassant 22. THE PATHFINDER James Fennimore Cooper 23. OLIVER TWIST Charles Dickens 24. A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT Mark Twain 25. TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST R H Dana Jr. 26. FRANKENSTEIN Mary W Shelley 27. THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO 28. MICHAEL STROGOFF Jules Verne 29. THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER Mark Twain 30. THE MOONSTONE William Wilkie Collins 31. THE BLACK ARROW Robert Louis Stevenson 32. LORNA DOONE R D Blackmore 33. THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Arthur Conan Doyle 34. MYSTERIOUS ISLAND Jules Verne 35. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII Bulwer-Lytton-Edward 36. TYPEE Herman Melville 37. THE PIONEERS James Fennimore Cooper 38. THE ADVENTURES OF CELLINI 39. JANE EYRE Charlotte Bronte 40. MYSTERIES Edger Allan Poe 41. TWENTY YEARS AFTER Alexandre Dumas 42. SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON Jonathan Wyss 43. GREAT EXPECTATIONS Charles Dickens 44. MYSTERIES OF PARIS Eugene Sue 45. TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS Thomas Hughes 46. KIDNAPPED Robert Louis Stevenson 47. TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA Jules Verne 48. DAVID COPPERFIELD Charles Dickens 49. ALICE IN WONDERLAND Lewis Carroll 50. TOM SAWYER Mark Twain 51. THE SPY James Fennimore Cooper 52. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES Nathaniel Hawthorne 53. CHRISTMAS CAROL Charles Dickens 54. THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK Alexandre Dumas 55. SILAS MARNER George Eliot 56. TOILERS OF THE SEA Victor Hugo 57. SONG OF HIAWATHA Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 58. THE PRAIRIE James Fennimore Cooper 59. WUTHERING HEIGHTS Emily Bronte 60. BLACK BEAUTY Anna Sewell 61. THE WOMAN IN WHITE Wilkie Collins 62. WESTERN STORIES Bret Harte 63. THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY Edward Everett Hale 64. TREASURE ISLAND Robert Louis Stevenson 65. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-AUTOBIOGRAPHY 66. CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH Charles Reade 67. THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS Jane Porter 68. JULIUS CAESAR William Shakespeare 69. AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS Jules Verne 70. THE PILOT James Fennimore Cooper 71. THE MAN WHO LAUGHS Victor Hugo 72. THE OREGON TRAIL Francis Parkman 73. THE BLACK TULIP Alexandre Dumas 74. MR. MIDSHIPMAN EASY Frederick Marryat 75. THE LADY OF THE LAKE Walter Scott 76. THE PRISONER OF ZENDA Anthony Hope 77. THE ILIAD Homer 78. JOAN OF ARC 79. CYRANO DE BERGERAC Edmond Rostand 80. WHITE FANG Jack London 81. THE ODYSSEY Homer 82. THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE Robert Louis Stevenson 83. THE JUNGLE BOOK Rudyard Kipling 84. THE GOLD BUG ETC Edgar Allan Poe 85. THE SEA WOLF Jack London 86. UNDER TWO FLAGS Ouida 87. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM William Shakespeare 88. MEN OF IRON Howard Pyle 89. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Dostoyevsky 90. GREEN MANSIONS W H Hudson 91. THE CALL OF THE WILD Jack London 92. MILES STANDISH Longfellow 93. PUDD'NHEAD WILSON Samuel L Clemens 94. DAVID BALFOUR Robert Louis Stevenson 95. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT Erich Maria Remarque 96. DANIEL BOONE John Bakeless 97. KING SOLOMON'S MINES H Rider Haggard 98. THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE Stephen Crane 99. HAMLET William Shakespeare 100. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY Nordhoff & Hall 101. WILLIAM TELL Frederick Schiller 102. THE WHITE COMPANY Arthur Conan Doyle 103. MEN AGAINST THE SEA Nordhoff & Hall 104. BRING 'EM BACK ALIVE Frank Buck 105. FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON Jules Verne 106. BUFFALO BILL 107. KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES Talbot Mundy 108. KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE 109. PITCAIRN'S ISLAND Nordhoff & Hall 110. A STUDY IN SCARLET Arthur Conan Doyle 111. THE TALISMAN Walter Scott 112. THE ADVENTURES OF KIT CARSON 113. THE FORTY FIVE GUARDSMEN Alexandre Dumas 114. THE RED ROVER James Fennimore Cooper 115. HOW I FOUND LIVINGSTONE Henry M Stanley 116. THE BOTTLE IMP Robert Louis Stevenson 117. CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS Rudyard Kipling 118. ROB ROY Walter Scott 119. SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE Richard Harding Davis 120. HURRICANE Nordhoff & Hall 121. WILD BILL HICKOK 122. THE MUTINEERS Charles Boardman Hawes 123. FANG AND CLAW Frank Buck 124. THE WAR OF THE WORLD SH G Wells 125. THE OX-BOW INCIDENT Walter Van Tilburg Clark 126. THE DOWNFALL Emile Zola 127. THE KING OF THE MOUNTAINS Edmond About 128. MACBETH William Shakespeare 129. DAVY CROCKETT 130. CAESAR'S CONQUESTS Julius Caesar 131. THE COVERED WAGON Emerson Hough 132. THE DARK FRIGATE Charles Boardman Hawes 133. THE TIME MACHINE H G Wells 134. ROMEO AND JULIET William Shakespeare 135. WATERLOO Chatrian Erckmann 136. LORD JIM Joseph Conrad 137. THE LITTLE SAVAGE Frederick Marryat 138. JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH Jules Verne 139. REIGN OF TERROR G A Henty 140. ON JUNGLE TRAILS Frank Buck 141. CASTLE DANGEROUS Walter Scott 142. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 143. KIM Rudyard Kipling 144. FIRST MEN IN THE MOON H G Wells 145. THE CRISIS Winston Churchill 146. WITH FIRE AND SWORD Henry K Sienkiewicz 147. BEN HUR Lew Wallace 148. BUCCANEER 149. OFF ON A COMET Jules Verne 150. THE VIRGINIAN Owen Wister 151. WON BY THE SWORD G A Henty 152. WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN Ernest Thompson Seton 153. THE INVISIBLE MAN H G Wells 154. THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC Francis Parkman 155. THE LION OF THE NORTH G A Henty 156. THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO Bernal Diaz Del Castillo 157. THE LIVES OF THE HUNTED Ernest Thompson Seton 158. THE CONSPIRATORS Alexandre Dumas 159. THE OCTOPUS Frank Norris 160. THE FOOD OF THE GODS H G Wells 161. CLEOPATRA H Rider Haggard 162. ROBUR THE CONQUEROR Jules Verne 163. THE MASTER OF THE WORLD Jules Verne 164. THE COSSACK CHIEF Nikolai Gogol 165. THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE Alexandre Dumas 166. TIGERS AND TRAITORS Jules Verne 167. FAUST Goethe 168. IN FREEDOM'S CAUSE G.A. Henty 169. NEGRO AMERICANS