Our little Sons of Thunder Academy is about to complete their 11th grade year of high school. It has, this life of homeschool, has been a wild ride. A most enjoyable, exciting, frustrating, satisfying, enormously rewarding wild ride. As I mentioned in this post, our plans for John and Jarrod's senior year, is taking a decidedly dramatic turn as they are enrolling in Point University's Dual Enrollment program. That being said, and planned, and enrollment is complete, we are patiently awaiting the beginning of fall classes: Advanced Biology, College Algebra (Algebra IV), and Advanced English Composition, plus Bible at home: Jesus, the One and Only, Believing God, The Beloved Disciple, and Breaking Free (all Beth Moore bible studies).
I realized, and so it seems have the boys, that when we finish The Lord of the Rings trilogy (which has taken us the entire school year to complete (as we are not done yet, but should be finished early May) what would we do about read a louds. For a homeschool that has prided itself on our attention to reading, and more importantly to us, reading aloud - me reading aloud to John and Jarrod - we aren't reading to stop reading aloud.
Through our homeschool years, we have read a bunch of books aloud that have been on those 'classic' reading lists, those must-read lists compiled by libraries, and literary experts, but through my research in compiling a list of possible reading material for their 12th grade year, I have found there are still many classics that we haven't read that seem to find themselves on almost every list of must-reads in high school.
So, I too have compiled a list of 18 books for the Sons of Thunder Academy to read aloud (by me) for their 2015-2016 school year. Actually, we will begin reading when we have completed the Literary Lesson of the Lord of the Rings. The following is the tentative list I have compiled, not in any order of reading:
The Catcher on the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Raven and other Poems by Edgar Allen Poe
Night by Elie Wiesel
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Catch 22 by Joseph Keller
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Book Thief by Markus Zusaf
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
Enders Game by Orson Scott Carol
If we enjoy Night and are intrigued enough we may read the trilogy. If we have time, and all is going well, we may also read more of the Harry Potter books. We might also be able to read The Help, The Diary of Anne Frank, and possibly Maus by Art Spiegelman
Honestly, with me moving to day shift we may have to shift our reading time to dinner, or while they are doing the dishes, but I doubt no one will be complaining.