This is a beautiful hymnal with all the favorite traditional Catholic hymns and the parts and prayers of the Mass in English and Latin. It avoids any use of "feminized" (a.k.a. inclusive) language, which has destroyed so many of the Church's beautiful hymns and even tried to remove the use of "he" or "him" when referring to Jesus. Our family has taken to pulling out this hymnal every morning after prayers and each person picking out their favorite song to sing together before beginning the school day. My six year old daughter who is just reading likes to scan through the index in back to look for something familiar. She is unwittingly introducing herself to the concept of "alphabetical order" and getting a little reading practice as well. The choir edition (424 pages) contains all four parts for those who wish to learn the harmonies and the chant parts of the Mass are in the traditional chant notation.I think this is an excellent resource for the Catholic homeschooler's music curriculum. Included are traditional Christmas Carols (such as Hark the Herald Angels Sing), favorite Marian Hymns (such as Salve Regina and Hail Holy Queen), hymns for every liturgical season and special feasts. Many hymns are offered in both English and Latin (such as O Come All Ye Faithful). The multiple indices in back are also helpful for finding particular songs and you'll even find an "Index of Scriptural References Related to Hymns."

What is history? A story. In The American Revolution for Kids, Janis Herbert has given us a well written, high interest story. Her style of writing is lively and interesting as wells as fair and impartial – giving us a fair and balanced picture of an emotionally turbulent time. This book offers a good overview of the time period (suitable for putting together a unit study on the time period) or interesting reading for its own sake.

Although the majority of the book follows the development of the war from its onset until its conclusion, Herbert also takes some detours, offering information about other events and people of the time – like a typical colonist and the life of soldier – to give us a sense of day-to-day life and customs of the time. The story doesn't end with the closing of the war; the last chapter discusses the Constitutional Convention through the final ratification of the Constitution.

There are many other extra features in this book:

A timeline sets the stage beginning with the French and Indian War (1754-60), following the development of important battles, explaining important dates along the way and finally ending with Congress adopting the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Spotlight biographies cover such important figures as John Hancock, George Washington, and Nathanael Greene. Other interesting facts are also spotlighted throughout the book, such as how many musket balls were made from the torn down, lead statue of King George.

The 21 Activities noted in the title are sprinkled throughout the text and include making a fringed hunting shirt like one worn by frontiersman Gen. Daniel Morgan, reenacting the Battle of Cowpens, creating a powder horn, sewing a pouch, and baking Boston Brown bread.

The end pages include a glossary, a list of famous Patriots and Redcoats, a list of biographies, the Declaration of Independence, web sites to explore, Revolutionary War Sites to visit in person, a Bibliography, and an index.

I would suggest that families make a point of reading about how Catholics were treated at this time, since this is overlooked in most secular texts. Far from religious toleration, there was a great deal of bigotry at that time, creating mixed feelings for Catholics as to which side they should support.

As an avid Chestertonian, I am frequently asked which G.K. Chesterton title I recommend for young people to read. The best and by far the most understandable "first" book of Chesterton's would be The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown.

In this book of the first twelve Father Brown mystery stories, editor Martin Gardner has looked up all the obscure references, which Chesterton frequently threw into his stories – mentions of people popular at the time whom we're no longer familiar with, use of obscure of obsolete English words from 100 years ago, slang expressions from 100 years ago – these are explained to the reader's satisfaction in the numerous footnotes by the helpful Mr. Gardner.

By reading the annotated version of the story, the Father Brown mysteries come alive for young people. And I must note that since several mysteries in the series refer to murders, even a decapitation, I would recommend this book for ages 13 and up.

The Father Brown mysteries are some of Chesterton's most enduring work. In general, people may not remember that Chesterton wrote such classics as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. However, they may recall him as the author of the Father Brown Mysteries, and so it is appropriate to start reading these mysteries first. These mysteries first appeared serialized in various magazines of the times in England. This in part explains the obscure references to people of that day. The other part of the explanation is that Chesterton considered himself a journalist, mainly writing words for newspapers, which would be thrown away shortly after reading. Never did Chesterton imagine that his work would be known and loved 100 years later.

If you are interested in introducing your teenager to the works of G.K. Chesterton; or if youare looking for some good fiction for your teen; or if you wanted to start reading Chesterton yourself and didn't know where to begin, I recommend this book.

Reading Level: Ages 9-12

The Art of Construction (originally published in 1979 under the title Building: The Fight Against Gravity) is one of the finest examples of books that help children understand principles of science as applied to real life situations – in particular buildings and making sure that they stay up in spite of gravity and natural disasters.

Children are introduced to important concepts like "tension" and "compression" with simple hands on exercises to help understand and remember them. Most chapters include a somewhat-more-involved construction project to teach these principles (and have a lot of fun in the process). Numerous illustrations make concepts clearer and aid in understanding the building projects.

The text is very engaging and easy-to-understand. We've found it ideal as a read-aloud with a group. Our co-op has been using it somewhere in the 2nd to 4th grade range, although it could certainly be used by much older students (all the way through high school would be reasonable). The engineer dads in our co-op have been very impressed with the book and the concepts the children study.

The chapter titles are as follows (and give you a little glimpse of the content and style):

• From Cave to Skyscraper
• Building a Tent
• What is a Beam?
• What do We Build Structures With?
• The Floor of Your Room
• A Steel Frame...Made Out of Paper
• The Part of the Building You Don't See
• What Tornadoes, Earthquakes and Changes in Temperature Can Do
• How to Fight Tornadoes and Earthquakes
• Ropes and Cables
• Sticks and Stones
• Strings and Sticks
• Shape and Strength
• Barrels, Dishes, Butterflies, Bicycles Wheels and Eggs
• Balloons...and Back to the Tent

Here are a few random sample paragraphs to give you a sense of the style and substance:

"If you had one of your friends put your hands on each other's shoulders and move your feet away from each other, you will become a full arch and feel compressed by each other's weight. But if your shoes slip on the floor and you begin to slide apart, the arch will collapse. Its ends must be firmly anchored to prevent it from spreading apart." (pg. 15)

"The best way to understand how the frame of a building works is to build one. A good model of a steel frame can be built with paper, provided we first build the separate elements of the frame: the columns, the beams, and the floors. A column should not take too much floor room, but must be strong enough to carry the compressive loads without buckling under them. A column buckles, that is, bends under compression along its axis, if it is too thin. Take a plastic ruler, stand it up, and push downward on it: there comes a point when the ruler will bend out." (page 39)

"The purpose of a building's structure is to guarantee that the building will stand up under all the loads and forces acting on it: the weights, the pressure of the wind, the forces due to temperature changes, and, possibly, the shaking caused by earthquakes. The builders want to make sure that the building will not collapse, and they hope it will not even be damaged, since in the first case it may kill people and in the second it may be costly to repair. They also want to make sure that the building will not move around. If a house were to slide down the slope of the hill it is built on, or if a skyscraper were to be toppled by the wind, the buildings would have failed their purpose, even if their structures might sometimes ed up undamaged." (page 57)

This is one of the books that I want to make sure each of my children have a chance to study sometime during their school years. Highly recommended!