We’ve just finished up college applications with my second child, and even though our focus is on small liberal arts schools that value homeschoolers, it’s always awkward to try to fit our rich, Charlotte Mason- and Classical-flavored education into boxes designed for traditional high schoolers. We filled out one scholarship application that asked several questions about AP and dual enrollment classes but nothing about the books they have read. Instead of taking the AP European history exam, I gave my high school years a year of European history (using the same textbook that my AP Euro class used 26 years ago!), followed by a year of in-depth British history. During the second semester of that year, we lived in Great Britain while my husband was teaching abroad and visited over 100 sites of historical and cultural significance that related to the history books we were reading each week. Many friends in our London church and tour guides at various sites commented that my daughters knew more British history than most British adults, let alone British schoolchildren. Coming off of that semester, we moved into a year-long class on Jane Austen’s England, in which we are reading all of Jane Austen’s works, as well as three novels that influenced her and four novels influenced by her, while we discuss different aspects of Regency era culture each week. How does one put this rich learning on a transcript? You can’t, really. My daughter did bring up our semester abroad and her Jane Austen class during her admissions interview to one college, and we created a list of all the books she read to send to another college that only gave her a few brief minutes to interview. In case you’re interested, here is her list. (Note: She did not include pleasure reading on this list. Everyone in my house always has multiple pleasure reading books going in any given week, but we stuck to class reading here.)
9th Grade:
The Federalist Papers (selections)
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (selections)
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Walden and Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
My Antonia, Willa Cather
A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
“Our Town,” Thornton Wilder
10th Grade:
“Much Ado About Nothing,” William Shakespeare
“Hamlet,” William Shakespeare
“Measure for Measure,” William Shakespeare
“Macbeth,” William Shakespeare
“Coriolanus,” William Shakespeare
Elements, Euclid
Beowulf
Morte D’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
“Everyman”
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
“The Importance of Being Earnest,” Oscar Wilde
“The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,” Christopher Marlowe
“Volpone,” Ben Jonson
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Navigating Genesis, Hugh Ross
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
11th Grade:
Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff
The White Horse King, Ben Merkle
Athelflaed, Tom Holland
Athelstan, Tom Holland
Fury of the Vikings, Dominic Sandbrook
William I, Marc Morris
The Women of the Cousins’ War, Philippa Gregory
Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Elizabeth, Jacob Abbot
Six Wives of Henry VIII, Dominic Sandbrook
An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
Nelson: Hero of the Seas, Dominic Sandbrook
Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More, Karen Swallow Prior
Victoria: Portrait of a Queen, Catherine Reef
First World War, Dominic Sandbrook
The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larsen
Enigma Girls, Candice Fleming
“Henry V,” William Shakespeare
“Romeo and Juliet,” William Shakespeare
“As You Like It,” William Shakespeare
“Twelfth Night,” William Shakespeare
“Midsummer Night’s Dream,” William Shakespeare
Iliad, Homer
Odyssey, Homer
“Oedipus Rex,” Sophocles
“Oedipus at Colonnus,” Sophocles
“Antigone,” Sophocles
“Agamemnon,” Aeschylus
“The Libation Bearers,” Aeschylus
The Poetics, Aristotle
Gorgias, Plato
Plutarch's Lives, Plutarch
The Histories, Herodotus
Euthyphro, Plato
Apology, Plato
Phaedo, Plato
Exhortation to the Greeks, Clement of Alexandria
12th Grade:
Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Minor Works, Jane Austen
Lady Susan, Jane Austen
Emma, Jane Austen
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Cecilia, Frances Burney
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Goldsmith
The Romance of the Forest, Ann Radcliffe
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Beth Brower
Presenting Miss Jane Austen, Rachel Dodge
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell
The Warden, Anthony Trollope
“Much Ado About Nothing,” William Shakespeare
“Henry V,” William Shakespeare
History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
Republic, Plato
Aeneid, Virgil
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
De Anima, Aristotle
The Annals of Imperial Rome, Tacitus
Theaetetus, Plato
Metaphysics, Aristotle
Phaedrus, Plato
On the Nature of the Universe, Lucretius
On the Incarnation, Athanasius of Alexandria
Black Ships Before Troy, Rosemary Sutcliff
The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare
