Mid-week book break
Every week I think I'll have more “corners” in which to discuss all the disparate topics of homemaking and homeschooling and thinking and reading, but then I get caught up in kitchen reno talk and realize the post has already gone on too long for anything else.
So we're going to have a little book chat now!
Maybe you are making plans for next year's homeschool curriculum, or perhaps a small co-op or school needs some suggestions for history? Let me recommend a new book, the follow-up to one I recommended last year, Becoming Rome.
This one is Becoming Greece: From the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Age in the Words of Eminent Greeks.
This is a genuine textbook with review questions, seminar topics, further reading, and endnotes. It has illustrations and maps including original battle diagrams by a family friend, Mark Hieronymus.
It differs from other textbooks in providing lots of primary sources and a context grounded in traditional principles, eschewing the false claim of values-free historical narrative that “doesn't impose morality.”
So in that sense, particularly with the reliance on primary sources, I think this volume fits in well with a Charlotte-Mason sort of curriculum overall. In itself it is well written and presented. History, even one age, is too large a topic to rely on separate original texts — not in high school! You need a trusted guide to pull it together for you.
The authors Bill Dardis and Tom Cox offer a “self-developed eighth grade ancient history curriculum” that acknowledges that “every story contains real decisions made by real people, and the reader, when faced with similar circumstances, will have to decide whether to imitate those choices or chart a different course.” To that end, Becoming Greece provides commentary alongside the events presented, from the leading lights of philosophy and theology through the ages.
As teachers at the highly regarded Heights School in Potomac, MD, the authors have experience guiding serious young people in this topic. They work on the premise that history is not “an exercise in skepticism” but “a constant pursuit of the truth.”
Becoming Greece is just as impressive as Becoming Rome. I recommend it for your middle- or high-school student or secondary school. You can read more about both and get more information here at Becoming Civilized and I see they will be offering videos to help the teacher prepare for the classes, which seems like a great idea.
I also received in the mail from the Silverstream Abbey Cenacle Press, these beautiful volumes of the essays of Hilaire Belloc. (They are for sale in the US at Sophia Institute Press.) If you aren't familiar with his writing, start here to get a taste: The Mowing of a Field — read it aloud tonight, why not! This essay is in the volume Hills and the Sea.
The site says, “As a part of The Cenacle Press' Kells Collection, the volume is printed as a cloth back with sewn binding, and silk screen and gold foil stamping finish on the cover. It is a volume that all true book lovers will want to have in their library!”
This is all very true. The volumes are just a book-lover's delight, with my favorite, so seldom found feature: they lie flat when you open them.
These books (or one of them, the start of a set) would make a great Father's Day gift for that gentleman who is looking to build a library with pleasing, old-fashioned volumes.
And I received a batch of prayer cards as well! I don't know if they come normally, but the one of Fr. Willie Doyle reminded me to mention him to you. I love him so.
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My book, The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life is available from Sophia Press! Also in paperback now! All the thoughts from this blog collected into three volumes, beautifully presented with illustrations from Deirdre, an index in each volume, and ribbons!
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