Reply #60: My 7rh grade daughter did a

[exboyfil]

compare and contrast between Treasure Island and The Hunger Games for her Homeschooling in English. Best essay she has written for me so far. Sometimes you need to throw in the carrot to get students to write about books they really don't like. My daughter has reasons for preferring The Hunger Games, and I respect those reasons. I have had a real issue with getting my daughters to read the classics - my older one wanted to read the massive Kissed by an Angel tome for her fiction in 9th English (public school). I said no and forced her to read Kidnapped. She is finally talking to me again.

It is hard to get away from the action oriented literature of today. I am somewhat saddened that the books of my youth (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Alexander Dumas, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells) are not as popular with my daughters. It is amazing that a single generation can change so much. I have to admit that some of the young adult fiction today is pretty good (City of Ember, Hunger Games, and Harry Potter for example).

My younger daughter has agreed to be Homeschooled again next year in Social Studies/English (8th grade). The reading list I have prepared so far is as follows:

American History to Jackson
Mayflower by Philbrick
1776 by McCullough
Undaunted Courage by Ambrose
Andrew Jackson by Brands
1st Semester (Early American Literature)
Last of the Mohicians by Cooper
The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne
Bartleby by Melville
Parts of Sketch Book by Irving
Thanatopsis by Bryant

2nd Semester Literature (American Literature)
Huckleberry Finn
The Lottery
The Red Badge of Courage
Slaughterhouse 5
The Old Man and the Sea
Blood Meridian

Even on an Honors track in English in our school system, none of these works will be read if today's syllabi apply in the future. I am amazed that my daugher could graduate without ever reading Huckleberry Finn. I had to read it twice (once in Middle School and once in High School). This year my daughter has read Sutcliff's derivative works of The Illiad and The Odyssey, Oedipus the King, Julius Caesar, a biography of Julius Caesar, writings out of Tacitus, parts of I, Claudius, and a biography of Livia.