UPPER SCHOOL READING — LITERATURE GUIDES

To find out more about this program, please take a look at the video that you'll find toward the top right of this page.

There are a lot of literature guides out there. Most of them offer a few definitions of difficult or archaic terms found in the literary work being studied. Some offer ideas as to study, and even a few tips as to the ideas and tools the writer used. Some offer a synopsis of the work, occasionally making the reading of the work in question irrelevant. That's not really a good thing, by the way.

Connect The Thoughts Literature Guides are far more comprehensive and involving than most of what's out there. They also make the reading more easily accomplished, more of a personal experience to the student...and more fun.

We provide guides to works that are in the "public domain", meaning works that no one owns rights for. This allows us to publish the complete work by the author directly in the course itself, broken into parts that make the reading simpler. You aren't going to have to go anywhere to find the books to be read.

We also stick to shorter works, as a way of introducing the student to great writers that is not quite so "endless".

We then define every difficult or key word in each part of the work to be studied – before the student reads that part of the work! This allows the student to understand the story the first time it's read with a minimum of confusion based on words and their meaning. (It also builds vocabulary and develops reading skills!) We also provide a list of locations mentioned in each story, which the student locates on maps and/or a globe before reading. Again, this makes the piece more easily understood the first time the student reads it.

Our guides go so much farther! Each guide starts with an explanation of literature. It explains important elements of writing such as what fiction is, plotting, the development of characters and conflict, the use of irony and surrogates in the writing, and other elements. The student will apply his growing understanding of the elements of writing to each story he reads, providing a more profound experience.

We offer a history of the author of each piece, and a separate and unique history of the period of time the work was written in, explaining how that moment in history contributed to the writing off that particular work of literature. We provide a history of the publishing of the work itself, from how and when it was authored and published, to its "track record" since that time. We include a list of film and other media adaptations of that piece. We often provide links to free filmed versions of the literary works, as well.

We follow each work read by the student (and each part or chapter of the work) with questions and exercises which help develop the student’s understanding of the piece, and his understanding of the relevancy of the piece to the student's life today.

If you are looking for a thorough literature appreciation course, one that will bring classic literature alive and make it thoroughly understandable and relevant, as well as more enjoyable, you’ll find our literature guides are winners! Available today are guides for:

• Sherlock Holmes Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  
• Scary Stories by Washington Irving
  
• Short Works by Mark Twain
  
• Short Stories by Edgar Allen Poe
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  

Each guide has about 20 lesson plans, and is about 120-220 pages in length, with an estimated study time of 20-55 hours or so.

(Please note – Links and sites on the Internet come and go. All links provided in this course were active when the course was published, but some of them may not be when you use the course. These are generally easy pieces to locate other active links for.)