Year 8 -- Literature List

First part here
So, the tentative booklist now is :

First Section:

Bible and Faith
Gospel of Luke (possibly using Navarre Bible commentary).
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis.

Biography/Historical Fiction
In Freedom's Cause by GA Henty
William the Conqueror by Hilaire Belloc

Geography
Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin
(also, some other book about Ireland, since we're doing a study of Ireland this year -- the Ireland day is going to be about once a week, and I will post that list separately since it will be multi-level)

Literature
Ivanhoe
A Taste of Chaucer
Shakespeare

Nature
Life of the Spider by Henri Fabre -- we love his books
I have a book by Edwin Way Teale which I've forgotten the name of


Health
Joyful Mysteries of Life

Civics
Catholic Book of Character and Success (instead of Ourselves, which I'll hold off on)
Plutarch ( & perhaps some other ancient history resource, especially if he shows a longing to continue with his extended project on that.)

Economics
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy

Poetry
Irish poetry
Here is Padraic Colum's Anthology of Irish Verse
Celtic Folklore -- interesting things here and probably some weird things too.

I like all the Year 7 Free Reading especially the historical ones. Some of them he has already read. Some of the icelandic sagas listed, we will replace with the ones my Dad gave me that I have been reading with Brendan.

I hope to focus particularly on Howard Pyle and Sir Walter Scott, since he is at the right age and has that temperament to enjoy them.

For Art I would like to do a study of the Book of Kells

I think Sean would benefit from "How to Read a Book" more in his high school years, though Liam read it in 8th, so perhaps Sean could read Landscape with Dragons instead- since we don't agree with everything the author says in his book, it makes for excellent discussions, very good for this dialectic phase of middle school.

This is just the reading. He does Key to Algebra for Math and Latina Christiana for Latin. I may try him with Traditional Logic I or wait till next year. There are lots of details about things like current events, narrations, and grammar and rhetoric on the Ambleside site. I used Daily Grammar with my older kids at that age as a survey/consolidation before high school, and it worked pretty well.

Lastly! I have his reading for after that drafted out but we will see how this goes before I get it planned out in detail. I think he is ready for a BIT of more challenging reading and narrating and 8th grade is usually a high school prep and grade school consolidation year, in our homeschool. But it's often difficult to tell how the children will respond to a shift in direction and I definitely want him to thrive.