[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Shari Maser, Off-Campus Program Advisor
For students who are taking charge of their own education through homeschooling, distance learning, or alternative campus programs like ours, reading stories by and about others in the alternative education community can be both affirming and inspiring. The titles below can be a great place to start.
Books BY Homeschoolers…
Did you know that many homeschooling students and parents are published authors? Here are some examples of homeschooler-authored books I have personally enjoyed:
- Fiction: Eragon series by Christopher Paolini
- Non-Fiction: How Carrots Won the Trojan War: Curious (But True) Stories of Common Vegetables by Rebecca Rupp
- Non-Fiction Picture Book: Carolina’s Story: Sea Turtles Get Sick Too! by Donna Rathmell German (who is also the editor at Arbordale, a respected children’s book publishing company)
And I recently discovered this website that curates an extensive list of authors who homeschool or were homeschooled themselves.
Books ABOUT Homeschoolers…
When my kids were younger, some of our favorite books were stories about homeschoolers, such as:
- Ida B… and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan
- The Boxcar Children (series…though we mostly just liked the first 19 books, which were written by the series originator, Gertrude Chandler Warner)
- Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos (series) by R. L. LaFevers
Check out this long list of books featuring homeschooled characters for many more titles.
If you like biographies and autobiographies, the Famous Homeschoolers and Successful Homeschooling websites provide diverse lists of homeschoolers whose life stories might be worth reading about, from founding fathers (like Benjamin Franklin and John Adams) to modern-day athletes (like Tim Tebow and Serena and Venus Williams).
And if you want to go beyond books, check out the movie version of Nim’s Island.
What are some of your favorite books (or other media) authored by or featuring homeschoolers? Please share them with us below.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
2 Responses
The fact is, homeschooling has become so mainstream that the biggest difference in the daily lives of most homeschooled students and their public or private schooled peers is where they are educated.
Thank you for your comment. Although the point you make is somewhat true, I think there are more differences than you may at first think. In Clonlara’s Off-Campus Program, we have the privilege of seeing many young people do far more than they would have done at school. Homeschooling is a journey and for some students and families all they have known is the traditional school format—so they may start out using that same format. However, we also see many students who choose not to do the same thing at home as they were doing in school, in fact one of the reasons they chose to homeschool was to get away from a model that wasn’t working.
I can think of the student who planned and made his own cardboard armchair; the student who made his own violin after learning from a master violinmaker; the student who writes her own complete orchestral pieces; the student who was a runner up in TV’s MasterChef Jr. and now has his own cookbook and YouTube channel teaching young people to cook; the student who worked alongside her dad to rebuild a car from the engine up; and the student who researched different naturally occurring plants where he lived so that he could safely live off the land for a month before going to the Sahara Desert for a wilderness survival course. I could provide many other examples.
Many of our students are doing remarkable things following their own individual curiosity, interests, strengths, and talents. Homeschooling allows these students the option to go far beyond “school at home,” and we see many families who take this opportunity to do something different. Homeschooling in this sense allows them to learn in a style and format and pace that works for them, where they are no longer governed by a bell or a teacher giving out assignments and homework. It gives many students the opportunity to be fully engaged in their own learning.
– Bev Munday, Director of Education