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.