TOG question

[cseitter]

Do you really need to buy all the books?

 

I really don't want to shell out $60 for the Norton Anthonlogy for Western Lit because my library doesn't have it. My DS is doing Year 2 Unit 3 to start because he was in PS last year and that is where his World History class left off.

 

Thanks!

Cindy

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[Karenciavo]

The overall answer is you can often substitute books, but at the rhetoric level it's harder to do that. If you're doing TOG lit does your library have the works he would be reading in Norton? BTW, I use a different version of Norton, I got it used for $5.

[choirfarm]

For rhetoric level literature I would say yes. However, I got a Norton Anthology...wasn't the exact edition but it was 1 dollar at our Library used bookstore. I had to tweak just a little bit, not much. Try used book stores, used textbooks at Amazon.com, etc.

 

Christine

[Candid]

In your case maybe not, if you already own the TOG materials go online or just look to find out when the Norton Western Lit anthology is being used. Year Two Unit 3 is bringing you to the end of its time of use so I would substitute if only a work or two is being used in it. If you asked me this in Year 1 Unit 1, I'd say get the Norton it is well worth it. And used copies are out there (on Amazon the lowest price is $40).

 

Here's some of the obstacles you'll run into not going with it though:

• Translation issues both in terms of how good a cheaper or older translation is and not being able to find the quotes that Tapestry will pull out for the student to analyze.
  
• What to read. This is obvious, Tapestry will schedule a number of pages, you can find the Norton table of contents online at Norton's website, but in a long work that may or may help. Depends on how the Norton editors have done selections. And how clear what the table of contents says is.
  
• How much to read. Your student will probably end up reading more than the scheduled readings both to deal with the issue above and because the Norton does remove material inside sections as well as whole easily defined sections.
  

 

Some students and moms won't be bothered by this. Mom will do her best to match things up and the student and mom will roll with the punches during the question and answer phase of work. On the other hand some moms will be perplexed as to how to decide what to read and even worse their student will generate a huge head of frustration up which might even lead to that worst of all home school events: tears (with maybe a side of shouting).

 

I don't know you or your student so you'll have to decide that on your own.