What were your favorite (meaty) Progeny Press guides for middle school and high school?

[HappyGrace]

Some of the PP guides are written much better than others to be meaty and thought-provoking and thorough! Bronze Bow is an example of one I've used that is good.

 

Do you have any that you've thought were especially well done? Which ones, and by what author? (wondering if the different PP authors make the difference!)

 

thanks!

[Lori D.]

We've only used high school level guides. PP guides spend a lot of pages on vocabulary, which was not typically of interest to us or needed for us. Also, while I don't mind the Christian worldview emphasis, I prefer guides that give you more "meat" about actual literary analysis and Literature topics. Here are guides we used, and my opinions, FWIW ;) -- again, just MY opinions about the PP guides we used; you may feel differently. :)

 

best PP guide

- Introduction to Poetry (clear, specific guidance in learning to analyze poetry)

 

good PP guides (good discussion questions)

- Frankenstein

- Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

- Farenheit 451

- The Great Gatsby

 

disappointingly "lite" PP guides

(didn't bring out anything new; we came up with much more in-depth discussion on our own)

(questions seemed more "comprehension" based rather than discussion based, and the "dig deeper" questions overall seemed weak compared to the meaty topics and themes that are in the works)

- Tale of Two Cities

- Huckleberry Finn

- The Old Man and the Sea

- Out of the Silent Planet

- Perelandra

 

 

We typically used 2-3 resources per piece of Literature to help flesh it out. Other resources we enjoyed and/or found useful:

- Garlic Press Publishers: Discovering Literature series: Challenger Level guides (secular)

- Glencoe Literature Library guides (free) (secular)

- Parallel Shakespeare materials -- student workbooks and teacher guides (secular)

- Brightest Heaven of Invention: Christian Guide to Six Shakespeare Plays (Christian)

- a few of the Portals to Literature guides (secular) (written for a class, so must be adapted quite a bit)

- a few of The Great Books guides (guided worldview discussion rather than literature guides) (Christian)

 

Other free resources:

- Sparknotes

- No Fear Shakespeare (parallel original/modern translation)

- Cliff's Notes

- Pink Monkey

- Schmoop, Penguin Group teacher guides

- Wikipedia articles on literary movements, or articles on specific authors or works

 

We also found these Literature programs to be helpful, esp. for the beginning stages of Literature (gr. 7-9):

- Hewitt's Lightning Lit & Comp grade 7 and grade 8 (Christian author, written for secular use)

- Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings (Christian author, written for secular use, Christian material in appendix)

- IEW's Windows to the World (Christian)

 

BEST of luck in finding what works best for your family! And enjoy your Literature journey! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[mom2jjka]

The Hobbit

Julius Caesar

The Hiding Place

 

[HappyGrace]

Wow-awesome help, thank you so much!!!

[Joan in GE]

I agree with Lori D that the Intro to Poetry is really good!

 

We also like Uncle Tom's Cabin...which brought in a lot of Information I hadn't known...

 

There were others that we liked but I'm drawing a blank at the moment....I'll try to dig them out shortly...

 

[ValRN]

:bigear:

[walkermamaof4]

Can someone compare Lightning Lit to the Progeny Press guides? I'm trying to decide between a few guides vs doing LL. We already have a Dickinson poetry study planned. Thank you!