History Review Turning Back the Pages of Time

This History review is about a book that is a great history resource for homeschooling. I have used this book over and over again both when planning a school year and during a school year for ideas.

The official title is "Turning Back the Pages of Time - A Guide to American History Through Literature" by Kathy Keller. It's just a small booklet that doesn't look like it would be very valuable, but don't let size fool you!

The book is organized in a very simple format. It breaks down the periods of American History and gives literature suggestions for each period. It starts with the early explorers of 900 up to World War II. There are suggestions for early grades (K-3), older grades (3-6 and up), and Christian titles. She also gives suggestions for additional biographies and the Dewey Decimal system number where you can find more information and books on that period of History.

History review - quick ways to plan your year with this book

Each section of the book - Early Indians and Pilgrims, Colonial America/Pioneers/Indians, American Revolution, Westward Expansion, Civil War Era, Progressive Era, and World War II include the suggestions of books mentioned above. The back of the book even lists general US history books, cookbooks and craft books that you can used to reinforce your History learning. This way a parent can choose an era of history to study and have all the literature books listed for them that they can use that year. This makes it easy to choose a time period and move forward with very little effort. If you are wanting to do a history review of an era, this book makes it very easy to pick and choose a few books from their list to brush up on that era.

If a family wants to do some American and some World History, they can use this book for suggestions for American history books for that era and then they can use another resource to find out what was going on in other parts of the world during that same era. The books in this list are mostly well loved classics and not boring books that no one would want to read.

If you are using a literature approach to History, this book will be very valuable to you. I love it! This book has saved me lots of stress when planning a homeschool year because all the books that fit with the period we wanted to study were listed right there in front of me. Most of them are available at the library which was even better.