World Lit Suggestions

[Murrayshire]

My dd 9th grader is not a voracious reader but she would like to keep her literature for English tied in with her history. We will be using the OM World History coursebook, amongst other resources.

 

So, what would you suggest for favorite literature, short stories, and poems to include? I was thinking "a book a month", but really need help with selections to go along with survey of World History. Too many to choose from and since she is not a "reader," I really don't want it to be a daunting experience. I'd like to transcript this as "World Literature and composition."

 

I know you all have great ideas in this area, so get the ball rolling!

Thank you!

[Alicia64]

:lurk5:

[Lori D.]

Past threads with ideas:

"World Literature"
"Need book recs for World Literature"
"Must reads for World Lit?"
"Help! Need World Literature suggestions!"
"Please share TOP 5 must-read novels for World Literature"
"World Literature course?"
"Help! I need a World Literature anthology, high school level"

Hard to suggest specific titles, since I don't know what you and DD have already read, and also because I don't know what OM World History covers to be able to give you a matching literature list. 🙂 Can you provide a little bit of background or direction as to what kind of lit. DD is interested in, or how strong/weak of a reader or how sensitive of a reader, or what you've already done, or an overall "theme" or goal to your world literature?

Edited July 9, 2021 by Lori D.

[Murrayshire]

Past threads with ideas:

"World Literature"

"Need book recs for World Literature"

"Must reads for World Lit?"

"Help! Need World Literature suggestions!"

"Please share TOP 5 must-read novels for World Literature"

"World Literature course?"

"Help! I need a World Literature anthology, high school level"

 

 

Hard to suggest specific titles, since I don't know what you and DD have already read, and also because I don't know what OM World History covers to be able to give you a matching literature list. :) Can you provide a little bit of background or direction as to what kind of lit. DD is interested in, or how strong/weak of a reader or how sensitive of a reader, or what you've already done, or an overall "theme" or goal to your world literature?

Hi LoriD! Thanks for chiming in!

 

I think we want to cover literature to mirror what we are studying in history, but we may move faster in history. Dd won't be able to read a heavy novel quickly.... 6 weeks possibly. I would like to have a mixed genre.... more shorter works than long. She does have on her wish list to read the Odyssey, Beowulf, and at least one Shakespeare play. So I'd like to cover those because she, well, actually wants to!!

I'm attaching Oak Meadow's World TOC so you can see how it's set up. (hmmm.... looks like the link won't work and for some reason I can't attach the pdf) I'll try to note it below.

 

I'm not sure if arranging World Lit would be best chronologically or regional. I just need direction. I was thinking about using Glencoe guides and/or LitCharts. I also have a Longman Anthology World Literature compact edition book that I picked up for a few dollars at used book store.... but she took one look at it and huffed. That may be what I read out of because it has great sections where it actually talks about each era in history.

 

I have contemplated Learning Language Arts through Lit. She likes the looks of the reading selections though I can't get a real good feel about it from samples. I wish I could get more feedback on this. Wonder if there is a sufficient amount of literary devices discussed?

 

I would like to add more modern literature and not just older works.....I have Red Scarf Girl, Keeping Corner, The Zookeeper's Wife, etc......

 

:sleep: Hope I didn't rant on and on..... it's been a long day and I'm not thinking straight. Ready to hit the sack!

Edited June 21, 2017 by Murrayshire

[Murrayshire]

Since I wasn't able to link it or upload it above.......Oak Meadow TOC for World History...... I'm allowed to share this. OM sent it through email because they haven't updated the samples for World History and many people were asking for TOC.

 

First Humans and Early Civilizations, Early Humans (prehistory–3500 B.C.E.) Fertile Crescent and Egypt (3500–500 B.C.E.) Activity A: Modern Artifacts Activity B: Archaeological Digs

 

 Ancient India, China, and Greece, Ancient India and China (3000 B.C.E.–500 C.E.) Ancient Crete and Greece (2800 B.C.E.–500 C.E.) Activity A: Ancient Art Activity B: Peace Dividend Activity C: Life in Ancient Greece 

 

 Ancient Rome, Roman Empire from 600 B.C.E.–500 C.E. Activity A: Pictorial Timeline Activity B: Greek and Roman Architecture 

 

Early African Civilizations and the Rise of Islam, Early African Civilizations, 2000 B.C.E.–1500 C.E. The Rise of Islam, 600–1500 Activity A: The Birthplace of Religions Activity B: African Archaeology

 

The Americas, The Americas in 400–1500 Activity A: Ancient Structures Activity B: Ancient Writing Activity C: Explorers and Archeologists

 

 Asia, Asia from 400–1500 Activity A: Ethnic Groups in China Activity B: Life with Genghis Khan Activity C: Japanese Painting Activity D: History of Samurai

 

 Byzantine Empire and Europe in the Middle Ages, Byzantine Empire (400–1300) Europe in the Middle Ages (1000–1500) Activity A: Gregorian Chant Activity B: Design a Castle Activity C: Life in Medieval Times 

 

Renaissance and Reformation/ Europe in Crisis, Renaissance (1350–1600) Protestant Reformation and Religious Conflict (1517–1685) Absolute Monarchies (1550–1715) Activity A: Physical Ideal of the Renaissance Activity B: Religious Debate Contents Oak Meadow v Activity C: Versailles Activity D: Mannerism and Baroque Artistic Styles

 

The Muslim Empires and East Asia,  The Muslim Empires (1450–1800) East Asia (1400–1800) Activity A: Ottoman Military Elite Activity B: Voyages of Zheng He Activity C: Art of the Ming Dynasty 

 

Exploration, Revolution, and Enlightenment, The Age of Exploration (1500–1800) Revolution and Enlightenment (1550–1800) Activity A: Slave Trade Activity B: Ship Design Activity C: Musical Genius Activity D: Female Monarchs

 

The French Revolution,  French Revolution (1789–1815) Activity A: Women’s March on Versailles Activity B: Beethoven’s Third Activity C: Life of a French Soldier

 

Industrial Revolution and Imperialism, Industrial Revolution (1800–1870) Nationalism and Imperialism (1800–1914) Activity A: Revolution of 1848 Activity B: Russian Novelists Activity C: American Civil War

 

Dawn of the Twentieth Century, Industrial Prosperity The People’s Voice (1870–1914) Activity A: Urban Industrialization Activity B: Technology and Society Activity C: Fashion Statements

 

Changes and Challenges in East Asia, East Asia from 1800–1914 Activity A: Western Influences Activity B: Enduring Traditions Activity C: The Last Emperor

 

 Building Connections

 

War and Revolution, Russian Revolution (1914–1919) Activity A: Letter from the Western Front Activity B: Reporting the War News Activity C: Mapping the World 

 

The West in the 1920s and ’30s, The West between the Wars (1919–1939) Activity A: Cartoons with a Message Activity B: Policies in the Soviet Union Activity C: Movie Night

 

Nationalism in the Early 1900s, Nationalism around the World (1919–1939) Activity A: Ideology of Mao Activity B: U.S. in Latin America Activity C: China’s New Life Movement 

 

World War II, World War II (1939–1945) Activity A: Navajo Code Talkers Activity B: 442nd Regimental Combat Team Activity C: Citizen’s Perspective on Auschwitz Activity D: Political Cartoons

 

 Western World in Modern Times, Post World War II in the West and the Cold War Contemporary Western World Activity A: Berlin Wall Activity B: Movie Night Activity C: Citizens for Civil Rights Activity D: Community Memory Book

 

Contemporary Latin America, Contemporary Latin America Activity A: Native American History Activity B: U.S. Interventions Activity C: World in Revolt 

 

Africa in Modern Times, Contemporary Africa Activity A: Apartheid Activity B: National Identity Activity C: South African Leaders

 

Modern Middle East, Modern Middle East Activity A: Relations between U.S. and Iraq Activity B: Ancient and Modern Conflicts Activity C: Modern Middle Eastern Culture 

 

Asia and the Pacific Today, Asia and the Pacific Activity A: Beijing Olympics Activity B: Independence in Southeast Asia

[CAJinBE]

We did OM World History and our own World Literature course this year. The world history course covers basically all of world history so we just chose based on interests from various lists that I found online and what was suggested in the Excellence in Literature course ( I have the full set so I can pick and choose). In the end we spent a lot of the first semester on Homer's Odyssey and a few Greek plays because my daughter really likes those types of things. I found a study guide online for the Odyssey and listened to the Vandiver lectures from Great Courses. It was really fun for us. The second semester we did Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Julius Caesar, some 19-th century Russian lit, and Things Fall Apart.  Most of these are taught in the Excellence in Literature course. For Things Fall Apart, we just used a Cliff Notes and some online material. We spent about 4 weeks on each. 

 

We enjoyed the freedom of choosing good books and writing about them. My other daughter did an online World Lit course which consisted of a lot of very short works and two books. I think they were Rebecca and Julius Caesar. They followed some sort of themes. It's been a couple years so I don't remember exactly. But I far preferred our self-designed course.

[Murrayshire]

We did OM World History and our own World Literature course this year. The world history course covers basically all of world history so we just chose based on interests from various lists that I found online and what was suggested in the Excellence in Literature course ( I have the full set so I can pick and choose). In the end we spent a lot of the first semester on Homer's Odyssey and a few Greek plays because my daughter really likes those types of things. I found a study guide online for the Odyssey and listened to the Vandiver lectures from Great Courses. It was really fun for us. The second semester we did Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Julius Caesar, some 19-th century Russian lit, and Things Fall Apart. Most of these are taught in the Excellence in Literature course. For Things Fall Apart, we just used a Cliff Notes and some online material. We spent about 4 weeks on each.

 

We enjoyed the freedom of choosing good books and writing about them. My other daughter did an online World Lit course which consisted of a lot of very short works and two books. I think they were Rebecca and Julius Caesar. They followed some sort of themes. It's been a couple years so I don't remember exactly. But I far preferred our self-designed course.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I only have the Intro to Literature book. Do the other four book of EIL have suggested short stories, dramas, and/or poems?

 

I'll be sure to check out the lecture on the Great Course since I purchased the Plus edition.

 

Thank you! Sounds like you both had a great literature year!

[happypamama]

I'm using some of the Excellence in Literature modules from World and British for my tenth grader for post-Renaissance European literature next year. She read Beowulf this past year; the Heany version is good. She started Things Fall Apart a couple of years ago but got very upset at one scene, so we dropped it.

 

This is our tentative list for next year. I crossed Les Miserables and Don Quixote off the list because they're just so long. We were going to attempt Faust, but apparently a baby dies in it, and that's just a little too close to home for us after losing a baby a few months ago, so off it went.

 

Hamlet

The Pilgrim's Progress

The Three Musketeers

The Scarlet Pimpernel

short stories by Russian authors (from EIL)

Jane Eyre

Pride and Prejudice

My Family and Other Animals

The Book Thief

[CAJinBE]

The website for Excellence in Literature lists the books covered for each of the 5 curriculums. English 5 is World Lit and it has The Odyssey, Antigone, The Aeneid, Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Les Mis, The Portable 19th Century Russian Reader, Faust, and Out of Africa. English 2 has The Count of Monte Cristo, The Heart of Darkness, Till We Have Faces, Julius Caesar, Ivanhoe, and the Importance of Being Earnest. Enlish 3 is American Lit. English 4 is British Lit and includes King Lear, Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, To the Lighthouse. There are a few more. 

 

I feel like you  have  a lot of freedom and if you can do a book every four weeks or so you can have a nice variety. 

 

ETA: I didn't try to match the history curriculum because it moves too fast. It truly is a survey of the entire history of the world. But the Excellence in Lit program always suggests several context resources to look at online and usually requires an author profile and/or historical context paper in addition to the main essay on the text.

Edited June 21, 2017 by CAJinBE

[HollyDay]

We used Scott Foresman's World Literature.  It was excellent.  A wide range and variety of literature from around the world was included.  There were many authors I would not have included had we not used this book

[Murrayshire]

Thank you ladies!

 

[Lori D.]

Didn't mean to leave you hanging -- it's been a hectic last few days... And you may have already come to a decision, but I wanted to go ahead and finish up a "DIY" option and send that your way, too. (below)

re: using a literature program
I do think a program could work well for you, as it would cover a variety of lit. and would help keep it "contained". No personal experience with EIL, but I know from others it is a fine program -- it is writing intensive, and when I look at the amount of lit., it always seems a bit rigorous to me, so if you go with EIL, you might want to give yourself permission to drop some assignments or drop a book or two to best fit your student.

We used parts of the LLATL Gold American and British programs. They are pretty "lite", without much info or instruction in literary analysis or guided discussion. However, the World program looks more in-depth, and it covers a lot of the works your DD is already interested in, so perhaps use it as your springboard and just plan that you might need to use some additional resources to flesh it out if needed.

re: some of the historical fiction
You mentioned things like Keeping Corner and the Zookeeper's Wife. Those would be great supplement/go-along to give you a feel for the times, but I don't think they have the "meat" for analysis and discussion that other works would have. Similarly with Red Scarf Girl -- a great biography/primary source non-fiction work to supplement, but you just can't discuss/analyze those types of work in the same way you do with fiction. Biographies are factual and all directly laid out, without thematic depth. So I'd save those works to do as a book basket of supplemental reading -- maybe one book choice every 6-8 weeks for solo reading to go along with the historical times.

re: the Oak Meadow history unit breakdown -- that really helps! 🙂
It looks like there are 23 units, so if each unit takes roughly the same amount of time, that works out to about 1.5 weeks per unit, with an extra 2 weeks or so to spare (so I gave those to the first and last units), and came up with an overview, which looks like first semester is all of world history up to 1900, and the second semester focuses on 20th century world history. Below I've listed literature that could match up with your history.

Whatever you decide on, hope you guys have fun! 🙂 Warmest regards, Lori D.
____________________________

weeks 1-7 = Ancients
weeks 7-13 = Medieval
weeks 14-16 = Renaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment
weeks 17-19 = Revolution
weeks 20-22= 20th Century: pre-WWI
weeks 23-25 = 20th Century: Russian Revolution, WWI, post WW1
weeks 26-28 = 20th Century: WW2
weeks 29-31 = 20th Century: Cold War; contemporary Latin America
weeks 32-36 = 20th Century: contemporary Africa, Middle East, and Asia

Based on that, and the works you listed in your second post that are of interest to you to cover, here's what I see as a possibility for DIY Lit to go along with your History:

weeks 1-7 = history: Ancient (pre-history to 500AD)
weeks 1-5 = lit: The Odyssey (Homer)
weeks 6 = lit: Greek myths -- selected short stories to fill in as you have time
   possibly from Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales or The Wonder Book 
   or from Bulfinch's Mythology: Age of Fable: Stories of Gods and Heroes
week 7-8 = lit: The Ramayana -- abridged illustrated retelling: Ramayana: Divine Loophole by Sanjay Patel

weeks 7-13 = history: Medieval (500AD to 1500AD)
weeks 9-10 = lit: Beowulf (Heaney translation) 
   bonus: in addition to reading, listen to an abridged 2-hour version read by Heaney on YouTube, part 1 and part 2
week 11 = lit: selected short stories from One Thousand and One Nights
weeks 12-15 = lit: Shakespeare play

weeks 14-16 = history: Renaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment (1500AD-1800AD)
week 16 = lit: poetry
- England -- Shakespeare sonnets
- England -- William Blake mystical poems
- Japan -- Basho haiku poems -- Grass Sandals: The Travels of Basho (Spivak)
- China -- Li Bai (aka Li Po) -- Wikipedia: Chinese poetry, Top 10 Most Influential Chinese Poems

weeks 17-19 = history: Revolution (1800-1900)
week 17-20 = lit: choice of Dickens
(Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, [industrial Revolution culture]; or Tale of Two Cities [French Revolution])

weeks 20-22 = history: 20th Century: pre-WWI (1900-1914)
weeks 21-23 = lit: A Day of Pleasure (Singer)
   + short stories and poetry to fill in as needed

weeks 23-25 = history: 20th Century: Russian Revolution, WWI, post WW1 (1900-1939)
weeks 24-27 = lit: Animal Farm + poetry/short stories
supplemental history biography: Road From Home (Kherdian) -- Armenian genocide of WW1
supplemental historical fiction: War Horse (Morpurgo) -- European trench warfare WW1
supplemental historical fiction: After the Dancing Days (Rostkowski) -- America post WW1

weeks 26-28 = history: 20th Century: WW2 (1939-1945)
weeks 28-31 = lit: The Book Thief (Musak)
supplemental historical fiction: The Zookeeper's Wife

weeks 29-31 = history: 20th Century: Cold War; contemporary Latin America (1945-1989; present)

weeks 32-36 = history: 20th Century: contemporary Africa, Middle East, and Asia (present)
weeks 32-36 = lit: The Life of Pi (Martel) -- OR -- Cry The Beloved Country (Paton)
supplemental history biography: Red Scarf Girl
supplemental cultural fiction: Keeping Corner

Alternate longer works from around the world, and ideas of specific short stories:

1800-1850
short stories:
- Denmark -- fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen
- Germany -- fairy tales by the brothers Grimm
- Russia -- Queen of Spades, or other (Pushkin) -- short story
- Russia -- The Nose; The Government Inspector; or other (Gogol) -- short story

alternate longer works:
- France -- Count of Monte Cristo; or other (Dumas) 
- France -- Cyrano Debergerac (Rostand) -- play

1850-1900
short stories:
- France -- The Storm (Verne) -- short story
- France -- The Necklace; or other (de Maupassant) -- short story
- Russia -- How Much Land Does a Man Need; or other (Tolstoy) -- short story

alternate longer works:
- France -- Les Miserables; or other (Hugo)
- Ireland -- Dracula (Stoker)
- Norway -- A Doll's House; Peer Gynt; Hedda Gabler; or other (Ibsen) -- play
- Russia -- The Grand Inquisitor (section from The Brothers Karamotzov) (Dostoyevski)

1900-1950
short stories:
- Poland -- The Cinnamon Shops (Shultz) -- short story collection (magical realism)

alternate longer works:
- China -- The Good Earth (Buck) -- written by an American who grew up in China

1950-2000

short stories:
- Argentina -- short story by Jorge Luis Borges
- Italy -- CosmiComics (Calvino) -- short story collection

Edited July 9, 2021 by Lori D.