Review: Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis

This has been the year of Writing with Sharon Watson for our family.  I've got kids using some of her creative writing resources, and I've been keeping some of her ebooks close at hand for my own use.  Her products are high quality and interesting, so it was with confidence that we began our adventure with Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis.

Characters is Crisis is Sharon Watson's second volume of Illuminating Literature.  Each volume stands alone as a full-year of high school literature studies, and the volumes do not have to be used in order.  Simply choose which volume sounds interesting and get started!

Characters in Crisis focuses on what it says--character development and the crises they encounter.  What I like about this study is that Sharon Watson encourages students to evaluate the effect the characters and their crises have on themselves, as readers.

Watson's writing style is friendly and engaging, drawing the student into the study as something of meaning both to the teacher and the student.

Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis includes study of 6 novel-length works (novel, biography, drama, etc.) which need to be purchased separately, and a number of short stories for a great variety of study and pace.  The short stories are either included in the text or a link is provided to a free reading.  For novel-length works, it is recommended that the student use the approved versions so that page numbers align with references in the study guide.

Super Star, age 15, is the student in our family who had the privilege of using this course of study.  She was pleased to find that the literature choices were mostly new to her.  And the two with which she was already familiar (The Hobbit and Sense and Sensibility) are beloved favorites which she was happy to explore more deeply.

We received the following materials for review:

1.  Teacher's Guide
2.  Student workbook
3.  Quiz and Answer Manual

In addition, available as a free download at the Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis website,  is the Novel Notebook.  It was created in full color, but I used our family black and white laser printer to print and bind at home.  It is lovelier in color, but it is completely usable in black and white.

The Novel Notebook is an optional component to student study, but it seems to me to have a lot of interesting activities that help the student with visual and analytical evaluation.

I love this comparison between Frankenstein's monster and Adam!  What a thought-provoking activity for teens to complete!

In order to get to know if Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis is a good fit for your family, huge samples (the entire first unit) are available for each of the three components available for purchase, and the entire Novel Notebook can be downloaded without any purchase.

In addition, there are a host of additional resources available online, including the "Yes, I Read It" quizzes for each book.  These quizzes are the same as the ones available in print, but but taking the quizzes online, they are graded automatically on the computer.

A certificate of completion is available for printing, along with a question by question analysis of the answers the student gave.

Obviously I did not read the story!  Super Star did, though, and her score was much better than this.

Super Star preferred to take her quizzes on paper, but I liked the online format and feedback.

The student guide is a write-in worktext for a single student.  Questions requiring a written response mostly have adequate room for writing on the page, but there are discussion questions and writing prompts that need to be completed outside of the student guide.  We tend to split the discussion questions into two groups--some for actual discussion and some as short answer written responses.

At first I couldn't figure out how the Novel Notebook went with the student guide.  I contacted Sharon Watson with my question and received a very quick and thorough answer.  As it turns out, the instructions for when to fit it into study is clearly outlined in the Suggested Reading and Homework Plan at the beginning of the unit . . . I must have been skimming entirely too quickly to have missed the directions!  Nonetheless, I do appreciate the support offered.

The Teacher's Guide is not a reproduction of the student guide with answers.  It does provide some answers to objective questions, but because of the nature of literature study, it focuses more on teaching the teacher how to evaluate the student's original answers based on the objectives of the lessons presented.

It also provides significant guidance to teachers of co-ops or Christian schools for how to lead a literature course in a group setting.

So far, we're finding that Illumination Literature: Characters in Crisis is helping Super Star to pause and reflect significantly about what she is reading and why. 

To read what other crew members have to say about Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis by Writing with Sharon Watson click here or on the banner below.