TOS Review: Heritage History ~ Young Readers

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Recently, Heritage History gave the TOS Crew the opportunity to review their Heritage Classical Curriculum which includes five titles: Young Readers, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, British Middle Ages, and British Empire. Each title serves as a complete curriculum.

Heritage History offers affordable, old-fashioned (pre-1923), story-based histories that will appeal to families who want to enjoy learning about history without the burden of busywork and memorization. They focus on promoting the enjoyment of history rather than the study of it.

My family received the Young Readers Classical Curriculum CD, which is the introductory unit of this series and follows a different format than the rest of the titles. From the website, "The Young Readers library includes easy-to-read, engaging selections from many of the other libraries in the Heritage History curriculum series. Most of the books in the Young Readers collection are anecdotal rather than comprehensive histories—that is, they provide short stories selected to appeal to children rather than a complete overview of a civilization."

The CD format is very user friendly. The browser software organizes all of the information in a way that is familiar to most of us - like a website page. Also, classy illustrations give you the feeling of being in a real library! You can navigate this curriculum by clicking links under various headings on the left hand side of the page. Headings and links as listed on the CD are as follows:

NEW USERS
Introduction
Getting Started
Recommendations

LIBRARY
By Subject
By Genre
Summaries
Series

STUDY AIDS
Overview
Characters
Events
Images
Teacher's Guide

CURRICULUM
User Guide
FAQs

E-TEXTS
E-Readers
Self-Publishing
Copyright Terms
FAQs


In all, the Young Readers compact library contains 86 illustrated, classical history stories written for young students. Most stories can be easily read by a fourth grader, but older students can enjoy them as well. Parents can also choose to read the stories aloud to younger children. As you can see from the headings above, this curriculum contains so much more than just stories - in-depth introduction; helpful teacher's guide; timelines for ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Europe, and Early America; many historical images; and more.

Browsing through the 86 titles is very easy. You can browse books by subject or genre. Following is a sampling of books that are included in this curriculum. I will list books by genre since I prefer to search that way.

STORIES FROM HISTORY
American History Stories - Volume I  by Mara L. Pratt
Viking Tales by Jennie Hall  - My seventh grade son chose to read this one.
Stories from French History by Lena Dalkeith
Stories from Greek History by Ethelwyn Lemon
Stories from Roman History by Lena Dalkeith

SHORT BIOGRAPHIES
American Life and Adventure by Edward Eggleston
Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts by Frank Stockton
In God's Garden by Amy Steedman

BIOGRAPHY
The Story of Abraham Lincoln by M. A. Hamilton
The Story of Joan of Arc by Andrew Lang
The Story of Lord Clive by John Lang
Stories of William Tell by H. E. Marshall
The Story of Columbus by Gladys Imlach

BIBLE STORIES
The Nursery Book of Bible Stories by Amy Steedman
Stories from the Old Testament by Louey Chisholm

LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE
Stories of Robin Hood by H. E. Marshall
Stories of Roland by H. E. Marshall
Stories of Beowulf by H. E. Marshall
Jataka Tales by E. C. Babbitt

ADAPTED LITERATURE
Stories of Gulliver's Travels by John Lang
Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin by H. E. Marshall
Stories from the Odyssey by Jeanie Lang
The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter - I've been reading these stories aloud to my first grade daughter, although she's been asking to read on her own, too!

HISTORICAL FICTION
The Eskimo Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins
The Scotch Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins
The French Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins
The Spartan Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins - My fourth grade son chose to read this one.
Our Little Roman Cousin of Long Ago by Julia D. Cowles
Our Little Saxon Cousin of Long Ago by Julia D. Cowles
Ruth of Boston by James Otis
Seth of Colorado by James Otis

Again, this is just a sampling. You can view a complete list here.

Books can be read on the computer with Adobe Reader, printed out on paper, or downloaded to electronic readers such as Kindle and iPad. I am hoping to be able to purchase a Kindle this summer for homeschool use, which I think will make it easier to read these books. For now, we are just reading them on the computer.

You can purchase the Young Readers Classical Curriculum for just $24.99. That's a great deal if you ask me - just under $.30 per book! Whether you choose to use this as your sole

 history curriculum or as an enhancement to the one you have (as we are), I think it's a pretty good investment. It will be nice to have this library on hand as we move along in our chronological study of history.

See what other TOS Crew members said about Heritage Classical Curriculum.

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are mine.