We used Kolbe’s 12th grade literature last year. WE made some changes.
Tolstoy was great… the short story choices. I was thrilled myself to find this wonderful Christian author. I will read more of them myself in future. We particularly liked “Master and Man”.
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denosovich was also a treasure. The language was a bit coarse in parts, at least in our edition. Of course, the situation is very bleak — a prisoner in a gulag. But the story itself is surprisingly uplifting, showing the power of the human spirit. It was a witness to me.
WE didn’t read Crime and Punishment. I started reading it — it was just too grim for my son who is a bit scrupulous. He can wait till he’s older to get through that one.
He read Huckleberry Finn and House of Seven Gables. Both very good. Also TS Eliot. I’m not sure what he thought of him.
We took a side tack and read some British Literature — PRide and Prejudice (he’s only read one Jane Austen book, I know, I know!) and some Chesterton and Lewis. He has read a couple of their books every year during high school. They are almost all worth reading.
WE had the MODG British Lit syllabus but he had already read most of the books in there, so I used it for my daughter instead. But if you want to glance at their booklist and see if it helps you, go to the Mother of Divine Grace website and scroll down to 12th grade booklist (or just use the direct link).
Oh, and I carefully chose a couple of Flannery O’Connor stories for him to read. She is such a good writer, one of my favorites — but most of her stories are pretty shocking. I think I had him read “The River” and “Temple of the Holy Ghost” and “The Enduring Chill”.
Oh, and I also had him read Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” so we could discuss the secular short story writer.
Finally, he read “Shadow of His Wings” about a Catholic priest in the German army. The timing was neat because he read it just after Benedict XVI was elected.
Oh, and he read Orwell’s Animal Farm rather than 1984. We have an essay by CS Lewis which explains why he thinks ANimal Farm to be a better book than 1984, even though it’s a “fable” and usually read by junior highers. Anyway, I remember 1984 being very shocking and depressing to me as a college student with its nihilist ending and so I just avoided that for my senior. I wanted this year to be a sort of wrap up year for him where he was dealing with putting all the pieces together, but I thought all the ugliness of modern lit could wait until college.
Along with these literature choices I had him read a bunch of books on literary analysis. We hadn’t done a lit ana class during high school. So he read CS LEwis “On Stories” JRR TOlkien “On Fairy Stories” Flannery O’Connor “Mystery and Manners” A book by a Jesuit priest called “Norms for the Novel” (there’s a shorter book on the same theme by the same priest published by Kolbe called “Tenets for Readers and REviewers” that Liam read a couple of years ago). Finally, he read “Poetic Knowledge” by James Taylor and “Escape from Scepticism” by Christopher Derrick.
I think there is more but my mind has gone blank. WE didn’t do the history component of Kolbe. I had him do MODG’s American Government and Economics. Appropriate for him, but very dry and I don’t think I’d recommend it to a burned out student like your daughter. I want to tweak it before I use it for my second son.
For religion, he read “Story of a Soul” Augustine’s “Confessions” Adrienne von Speyr’s “Confession” — we skipped the Cure d’Ars Little Catechisms because I thought it would feed his scrupulous tendencies, and he’d already read the GKC selection on the Kolbe lineup. He also spent the year reading and outlining Msr Glenn’s “Tour of the Summa”.
Oh, and one more thing — I had planned for him to read “Witness to Hope” the bio of JPII as a sort of spine history of the 20th century but we ran out of time.
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