Can you help me enrich Geography with literature?

[Cindyg]

I seem to have gotten obsessed with structuring the perfect World Geography class for next year.

 

For starters, we have to use BJUP. We're long-time HomeSat users, and we're sticking with that.

 

But I'm finding all these great travel-around-the-world books: Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, of course; and another one by Michael Palin, where he duplicates the trip in modern times; and then there's Travels with Herodotus; and Following the Equator by Mark Twain.

 

How do I mix these in to the curriculum? Do we just read them? I'm afraid if we just read them, ds will not connect them to the appropriate part of our geography study, and the facts will just fall out of his head.

 

I'd like to chop them all up and read them country by country. In other words, read the passages on Japan from all those books while we're in BJUP's Japan chapter. Is that crazy? Too choppy? It will ruin the stories, right?

 

For instance, I know Around the World in 80 days is a story and needs to be read from start to finish or you'll lose the story. Sadly, his travel agenda does not follow the order of the BJUP textbook. (LOL.)

 

Should I use Around the World as a spine and coordinate the BJUP chapter's around the story?

 

I've read that Following the Equator can be read out of order. Michael Palin's itinerary seems to follow Jules Verne's, so that could work out. I don't know if Travels with Herodotus can be chopped up.

 

I'm obsessing way too much on this, aren't I?

 

Any advice?

[vmsurbat]

Well, since no one else tackled this, I'll give you my 2 cents, FWIW.

 

First, just know that BJU Geography will be a *full* course with plenty of work. So you need to be careful about over-enriching.

 

Second, the books you listed all seem like good reads, but not particularly conducive to being broken up to follow BJU's chapters. Also, three of the books listed (Verne, Twain, Herodotus) will be dated in terms of cultural geography, so I'm not sure how valid it is to expect your ds to learn "facts" from them. Your BJU text will have plenty of facts! I suggest letting those books be pure enrichment.

 

Books that I *do* think can be easily broken up and are culturally relevant include: The Hungry Planet, The Material World, and Women in the Material World. We live in Montenegro (former Yugoslavia) and have traveled through much of Europe and the photo spreads/family info was right on for the countries I personally know about. We use a lot of the stuff shown in the Bosnian spread (Bosnia is also a former Yugoslav Republic....) which delighted my kids!

 

I am not familiar with Michael Palin's book so I may be suggesting a duplicate, but one "travelogue" that we are reading is 360 Longitude--One Family's Trip Around the World. A family of four saved up for years and took a year to travel around the world. This is not an exhaustive look at every part of the world, but a record of highlights/meaningful moments/adventures of their travels. Again, those chapters that deal with many of the places we've been were right on target with our experiences. While not ideal, you *could* read this book by general region.

 

Also, I splurged and purchased Hewitt's World Lit Lightning Lit courses. These works are all modern day works set in Asia, Africa, Latin America. The course syllabi have a schedule for using BJU Geography following their literature. Even if you don't want to do that, we've enjoyed many of the suggested texts and have some new favorite authors. (Loved Malgudi Days, for example). You can see which books are included by browsing Hewitt's website and then checking Amazon reviews. That's what I did....

 

Best wishes in your decision,

[Cindyg]

First, just know that BJU Geography will be a *full* course with plenty of work. So you need to be careful about over-enriching.

 

Thank you, Vicki. Lots of good information in your post, and I appreciate it.