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Hello ladies ,

We will be doing American Literature with my 11th grader starting in January. We used SMARRS intro to lit and loved it, though there were definitely some substitutions needed in the book choices (as Carrie points out). There were just some of Smarrs choices that did not fit our family....so on to my question... I am wandering if there any of you who have done the SMARR American Literature coarse and could say which books you may have chosen to leave out and why? I would absolutely LOVE to be able to read each title and screen them for myself, but the truth is I just do not have the time (we have 5 blessings and one on the way and my husband runs a full time ministry which I help with when I can hoooo). So I just thought that I would see if any one of you who have already traveled that road could give your thoughts? If so that would be super and greatly appreciated!! If not then I will just find the time to read them and come back and share with you . Who knows by then Carrie may have them listed for us!! Thank you so much in advance and thanks to the Austin family, you are such a blessing!

Brandi,

I have just a little time this afternoon, so I'll just weigh in with my thoughts on this topic. Just to clarify, the reason this discussion is a board topic that is allowed is because the high school HOD guides have not yet been written. So, for those who are using HOD for high school, we strive to provide as much help as possible in making the guides work for high school with some tweaking. As far as SMARR goes, American literature is the area in which the guides from SMARR begin to be more heavily influenced by Watson's Southern agrarian leanings (so much so that some of his opinions really interfere with the readings of the books). This posed a problem for us as we headed into American literature this year, so for our own oldest son we ended up using BJU American literature interspersed with the reading of 5-6 full-length American novels. This is a challenging, but rewarding course of study so far.

We are enjoying the higher level questions posed by BJU and the chronological tour through American history via the various authors who wrote during the time period. Novel-wise, you could consider books like The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Scarlet Letter, Red Badge of Courage (which does include some offensive language), Up From Slavery, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Mouse That Roared. By reading these in conjunction with the many authors included in BJU (in the form of letters, short stories, poems, and journal entries), your student would gain a solid look at American history through literature. This is of course just one possible option, and we have yet to get through all of the novels I've mentioned above, but at this point in time it is the plan we're using and enjoying.

Blessings,
Carrie

Ahh, yes...after I posted this I headed over to try and figure out Smarrs new website set up and finally figured it out. I noticed the title about agrarian tradition and wondered if this may be the case ( I know you had mentioned it previously but couldn't remember when it came in). I then went back to LLATL and was looking it over. Thank you so much for sharing! As always, we greatly value your opinion!! I will look over the suggestions above and go from here... you listed for sure a couple of novels I wanted to check into, and I can easily check into the BJU! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Carrie!! I hope your family has a very wonderful Christmas!

Oooh, I love this thread : )

I'm very curious about the new Read With the Best by the same lady who wrote Write With the Best. It looks good from what I can tell online. Carrie, have you seen or heard of this? I was going to try to find it at the convention to check over, but I'm hoping it might be a good alternative for my sophomore next year. I'm going to check into Carrie's recommendations here as well as I always trust her judgment. Anyone else heard of Read With the Best?