Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

I’ve been storing a mountain of emails in one of my Outlook folders—comments and testimonials from happy WriteShop users. Our brochures and website only have so much room for snippets like these, so I thought I’d give a voice to these dear moms and co-op teachers who took the time to brighten our day. Hope they encourage you, too! Continue reading →

 I have always loved to supplement our history studies with historical fiction. I found picture books and novels aplenty when we were studying Greece and Rome, the Renaissance and Reformation, or the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. But ancient Sumer? The closest I could get was the story of Gilgamesh, but it’s an epic, not a novel, and not nearly so appealing to eight- to twelve-year-old girls!

Happily, both girls and boys alike will delight in Secret of the Scribe, the first historical novel about ancient Sumer I’ve seen. Author Jennifer Johnson Garrity transports the reader back 5000 years to the time of Abraham and the bustling city of Ur. Told in first person, it’s the story of a young girl, Tabni, who grows up in comfort as a slave to a Sumerian queen—until a great calamity forces her to flee the palace by night and make her way into the world alone. Continue reading →

Did you know historical fiction is growing on your family tree?

Every young writer of historical fiction has plenty of inspiration just waiting to be plucked from his or her family tree. Family Tree enables students to harvest this vast crop by producing short (or long!) stories that are not only thoroughly researched and well-written, but heirlooms to be treasured by your family for generations to come. Continue reading →