Modern History and lit for an older 9th grader...

[Greta Lea]

My son is wanting to study Modern History this fall. I had first planned on just using SL Core 300, but the budget is tight and I know we won't read all the books in that core. It's just too much reading for him.

Anyway, I'm just thinking of pulling together my own Modern History and Lit for him next year.

I'm thinking of either using the out-of-print DK 20th Century Day by Day or the Visual History of the Modern World. Any opinions on these? Which would be better?

Here's a list of the Literature books that I *already have on my book shelf*. How does this list look *and* what would you add to it???


-The Call of the Wild
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
-Time Machine or The Island of dr. Moreau or The War of the Worlds (I have all 3. Which would you choose?)
-The Hiding Place
-To Kill a Mockingbird
-The Contender
-The Giver
-

[elizabeth]

Here is my list for Moderns:
Modern Literature: 2 credits
The Good EArth-P Buck
The Jungle -Lewis
O Henry Short Stories(all)
The Secret Sharer-J Conrad
Kitchen Boy -R Alexander
The Great Gatsby-Fitzgerald
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn-Smith
Black Elk Speaks-Neidhart
Hiroshima-Hersey
Lost Horizon-Hilton
Lord of the Flies
Catcher in the Rye-Salinger
Selected poetry L Hughes, Roethke and Gwendolyn Brooks Wea re reading a great deal of biography and memoir for history as well. I am thinking of adding Heavy Sand by Rybakov regarding life in the USSR during WWII but suspect it will be too much for sensitive dd.

[Lori D.]

It was a GREAT choice of history period for younger high school boys! Below is what we used, in case it gives you any ideas. We will be doing American History with American Lit this coming year, so several of your titles (Huck Finn, Call of the Wild) will be part of our American Lit. Enjoy your 20th century studies! Warmest regards, Lori D.


History

1. textbooks:
- Spielvogel's Human Odyssey (pages 688-1073) -- ran out of time to finish the last 150 pages; SURE wish we had the time to finish!
- Our Century in Pictures for Young People (all)
- Usborne 20th Century (all)
- Story of the World vol. 4 (a few chapters)
- The World Today (a few chapters)

2. timeline entries:
Divided the years 1890-2010 into 12 decades. Once every 3 weeks they had to make 20 entries to the decade of KEY events which had to be in various parts of the world and be a variety of types of events (science, medicine, politics, sports, war, art/drama/music/lit, person, natural disaster, etc.). These were just single sentence entries (ex: "1945 (Japan) = US explodes first A-bomb over Hiroshima.") They mostly used The Visual History of the Modern World as the resource for this.

3. "decade" reports:
One 6-page paper per quarter, picking a person or event from the currently studied time frame to research and write a report on, citing at least 3 sources of at least 2 different types (i.e., 2 books and 1 website).

4. historical fiction
Solo reading of 6-8 books. I gave them a choice from each "decade"; most are Sonlight titles. Example:

1. 1890-1910 = Summer of the Monkeys -OR- Little Britches -OR- The Great Brain
2. WW1 = The Road From Home
3. 1910-1920 = Einstein -OR- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Journey
4. 1920-1940 = Cheaper by the Dozen -OR- All Creatures Great and Small -OR- A Year Down Yonder -OR- Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry
5. WW2 = Escape From Warsaw -OR- Winged Watchmen -OR- The Endless Steppe -OR- Hiroshima
6. post WW2 = After The War
7. 1950-1970 = The Cay -OR- I am David -OR- Kon Tiki -OR- Tramp For the Lord
8. 1970-present = God's Smuggler -OR- Bruchko -OR- A Ring of Bright Water -OR- The Pushcart War -OR- The View From Saturday



Literature

9th gr. son = Lightning Lit 8
this program counted for the literature portion of his English credit; works that matched up with 20th century:
- A Day of Pleasure (Singer) -- pre-WW1 Jewish Warsaw Poland
- My Family and Other Animals (Durrell) -- 1930s English family living on Greek island
- To Kill A Mockingbird (Lee) -- 1930s racism, Depression in Deep South

10th gr. son = "Worldviews in Sci-Fi Literature" (made our own)
these works counted for the literature portion of his English credit:
- Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde = Christianity; inherent sin nature
- Frankenstein = romanticism; gothic elements
- The Time Machine = socialism; evolution
- Animal Farm = communism
- The Giver = utopia/dystopia
- Brave New World = utopia/dystopia
- Farenheit 451 = image vs. written word in a nearly post-literate society
- A Canticle For Leibowitz = post-apocalyptic world; unstable state cycle vs. stable church
- Cosmicomics (short stories) = existentialism
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy = absurdism


Elective: The Great Books
all 3 of us together did additional literature for a separate full credit; these works matched up with 20th century:
- The Most Dangerous Game (short story) -- 1920s; island off of S. America
- Gift of the Magi (short story) -- 1900; US
- All Quiet on the Western Front -- WW1
[To Kill a Mockingbird -- we did this together rather than as part of LL8]
- Diary of Anne Frank -- WW2

[Julie in GA]

Some of your 10th grade books could work with a ninth grader -- my 9th grader read most of them for the Omnibus III course.

[Julie in GA]

I remember reading The Catcher in the Rye in junior high school, and that it was quite the popular book in the 70's, but would you really call it literature?