Are Smarr's American Lit selections engaging?

[Mommy7]

Are they enjoyable to read?

 

Thanks so much.

[Mommy7]

:)

[Storm Bay]

:lurk5: (I'd like to know, too.)

[Lori D.]

Did you mean "how enjoyable are the SMARR guides" on American Lit.? I've only ever used one individual SMARR lit. guide (Epic of Gilgamesh) and was greatly disappointed by its slimness, its focus on vocabulary lists and comprehension questions, and the very limited quantity of background info, analysis, guided discussion questions, and writing assignment ideas. HOWEVER, I understand from Katia on this board that the complete lit. programs must be different from the individual guides, and have more meat to them. Or perhaps I just got a bum guide??

 

Or did you mean "how enjoyable are the actual selections of American Lit." covered by SMARR guides? If so, is this the list of American Lit. works you'd be choosing from: Listing of Study Guides by Nation and Genre: American Literature? If so, down below I listed which of these works we've covered this year (using other lit. guides), and what our two DSs (gr. 10/11) reactions have been.

 

 

Just to give you context: we made our own American Lit. this year, and so we've been reading some of these same works this year. We're also using the Notgrass American History program, which includes a volume with source documents, original writings, a little poetry and fiction, and excerpts from various speeches and essays by American authors, some of which also overlap with the above SMARR selections. BEST of luck with your own American Lit.! Warmest regards, Lori D.

 

 

Fiction

- Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man ----- (I was hoping to do "Black Like Me", autobiography by Griffin)

- Billy Budd = both DSs despised Herman Melville's writing style; they said this work probably ranks as "MOST despised" in their 3 years of doing Great Books

- Call of the Wild = both enjoyed, younger DS esp.

- White Fang -----

- Selected Stories of Ambrose Bierce = "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"; DSs found this very interesting

- Selected Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne -----

- Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe = "Fall of the House of Usher"; DSs enjoyed it

- Prince and the Pauper = did Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for our Mark Twain; both DSs enjoyed it

- Red Badge of Courage ----- (we did a Stephen Crane short story instead)

- Scarlet Letter = theme-wise DSs thought it was okay; they just didn't care for the writing style

- The Mouse That Roared -----

- The Pearl = we start this next week

- This Side of Paradise -----

- Selected Stories of Mark Twain -----

- Selected Stories of Edith Wharton -----

 

Non-Fiction

- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin -----

- I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition -----

- Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson -----

- Selected Works of Jonathan Edwards = excerpts only from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"; okay; a few excerpts were plenty

- Mourt's Relation -----

- Sack & Destruction of Columbia SC -----

- Southside View of Slavery -----

- Up from Slavery ----- (we read a few short excerpts from Frederick Douglass' autobiography instead)

- Walden = excerpts only; everyone found Emerson's worldview fallacious and annoying, and everyone was glad we only read excerpts

 

Poetry

- Selected Poems of Robert Frost = we'll get to Frost in a few weeks

- Selected Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow = enjoyable

- Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe = "The Raven"; very enjoyable poem

 

 

Other works we read and enjoyed this year in our American Lit:

 

short stories:

- Rip Van Winkle (Irving)

- Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving)

- Luck of Roaring Camp (Bret)

- Thank You Ma'am (Hughes)

- The Catbird Seat (Thurber)

- The Last Leaf (Henry)

- Ransom of Red Chief (Henry)

 

novels:

- The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

- Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)

 

novellas:

- The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)

 

 

American Lit. we've enjoyed in past years:

 

short stories:

- The Most Dangerous Game

- The Lady or the Tiger

- Gift of the Magi

 

novels:

- To Kill a Mockingbird

[Mommy7]

Lori, thank you so much for taking the time to list all your literature selections. I was interested in whether the selections themselves, which are used in their complete courses, are interesting or not. On the Smarr website, if you click on conventional courses, and then Survey of Am Lit or something like that, the list comes up. I have never read the great majority of the list.

 

I'll be using the Smarr course with an 8th grader, if we go that route. She is an avid reader, so I feel sure she could handle the reading level. I just want it to be interesting for her as well. Our other option is to just pick books that look fun to read for that time period and have her do 2 Progeny Press guides. She will most likely be doing MFW high school after next year, so I just want to make sure she is prepared. Their recommendation is to do 2 Progeny Press guides at the 8th grade level. The only thing is, my dd did *not* enjoy the one she did this year!

 

I just want a literature plan that *I* don't have to plan out! I also like that it has questions about what is read. I'm still trying to sort it out. Any other thoughts or ideas?