The new Month 9 books are in the store! Just a reminder--Texas and California are included in the Month 9 study of Mexico as they were originally a part of Mexico.

Epic and Legendary Heroes takes you to stories of El Dorado. The Native tribes of both North and South America shared legends of a white bearded man who taught them the peaceable arts of civilization and led them to a golden age of peace. He told them he would return. Sadly, Cortez and other explorers were mistaken for their promised hero and led to tragic outcomes. The legend took many forms over the years and is connected to the Mexican legend of Quetzacoatl. I added in a few other chapters from other books that discuss this legend as well.

Imaginative Tales leads you mostly to stories from Brazil, but from other countries from South America as well. I drew from a Newbery Award winning book Tales From Silver Lands for many of them.

For My World Story Book, I had to draw from stories other than Arthur Mee to find enough. South America and Mexico have been challenging regions to gather stories. But I think you'll like what I found. You'll also find a few stories from other Month 9 topics like the Civil War.

When I did the original Stories of Mexico and South America in the World History Series, I couldn't find a book with an introductory history to South America that I liked, so I included several stories of South American heroes. Since then, I have found an intro book to South American history I do like, so I moved the stories of the lives over to the Month 9 Great lIves books and added the new book to the World History volume.

You will also find a look at the Catholic Faith in the Great Lives volume from the Had You Been Born in a Different Faith book because of the heavy Catholic influence in Latin American countries.

I hope that isn't too confusing!

The new Month 8 books are in the store.

Imaginative: Here are tales from Africa that were retold here in America through Joel Chandler Harris in the Uncle Remus stories. He learned them from the slaves. I know there is controversy around them, but they were woven into the moral fabric of America--for the good! This will give you an opportunity to read them from their original source and then how they were told in Uncle Remus stories. A good opportunity for discussion.

Epic and Legendary Heroes: I turned to the legends and heroes of Ancient Egypt. In the original World History book, I used a portion of the book that i am now including in its entirety in this volume. In its place, you'll see another book I found that was fascinating in that it explains how we pieced together the story of Ancient Egypt and its people through its art and stories.

Great Lives: This is mostly a collection of stories of African-Americans.

My World Story Book: Of course, Africa is not a nation. It is comprised of many nations. Here are stories of men and women who opened up the continent to the rest of the world. Africa is still unfolding to the world--I am excited at many of the discoveries that are being shared.

I am excited to invite you to a live session with 3 of the creators of Biblioguides this Friday, March 11 at 1 pm PST.

Tanya, Sarah and Kaylynn will be taking you on a live tour of Biblioguides specifically for members of our WEH community with ideas of how to use it to plan and organize your homeschool. There will also be an opportunity to ask your questions.

If you can't make it, the session will be recorded. But this is a great way for you to have direct communication with the very women who can answer all your questions.

I'm excited that many of you are discovering this incredible resource.

The link to join the Zoom meeting is here: Zoom Meeting Link

I know there have been a lot of questions about Biblioguides.

Sarah Kim and Tanya Arnold are going to do a live Zoom meeting just for WEH members on March 11th at 1:00 pm Pacific time. This will be a perfect chance to ask questions and have them walk you through the program. I'll be linking it here and it will also be linked on the WEH landing page in the site.

If you sign up by tonight, you'll have a full 30 days to test it out for free. After tonight, you'll have a 7 day free trial. Use this link to help support WEH: https://www.biblioguides.com/membership/signup/weh/

We are in the very early stages of adding WEH books and tagging them, so what you see now isn't a complete picture. But you will be able to get an idea of its searchable features.

And there is already a TON of wonderful resources already in place from other databases of books! I can hardly wait to start going through them and tagging them with WEH tags, i.e., by monthly rotation.

And yes---my current Libraries of Hope site is not going away.

If you missed the prior informational videos about the WEH/Biblioguides partnership, I've linked them here for you:

Introductory video

Custom Lists and Plans

Podcast #203: Is Biblioguides Worth My $0.20 a Day?

The new Month 7 books are now in the store.

Imaginative includes a sampler of stories from Arabian Nights (warning: they are not all warm and fuzzy) plus tales from Native America.

Epic and Legendary Heroes: I included several options of the song of Hiawatha. He was a real person. You'll find a short, intro story, a version with more narrative prose and then Longfellow's poem itself. He is an inspiring figure.

Great Lives: Mostly includes stories of lives from 19th Century America, but you will also find stories that take place in Arabia and Muslim countries.

My World Story Book: It was hard to find stories from this region! There were only a few in Arthur Mee, so I had to pull stories in from a number of sources. It is a mixture of 19th century America and stories that relate to Islam in some way.

It looks like the cat is out of the bag! I am very excited to introduce our new Libraries of Hope website.

As always, it's a work in progress, but your suggestions for improvement will be very helpful as we move forward in its creation.

Please take a few minutes to watch this orientation video. And then bring your ideas and suggestions to this thread or email them to me at librariesofhope@gmail.com

I do hope you will like what you see!

One of our first projects was the Story Bible, where we preserved the language of the King James Version, but created a very readable copy with a large font and small bite sized stories to engage young -and old!-- readers.

A couple of years ago we took the text of just the New Testament stories and added spaces to glue fine art images we provided into the book for the Stories of Jesus.

I am happy to announce the Old Testament is now available with fine art images. We divided it into 2 books so that it isn't so big for little hands to hold. Not every story has an art image, but you hopefully will find enough to keep interest alive.

It is now available in our store. We hope it will aid in your study of the Old Testament!

The new Month 6 books are now in the store:

Imaginative Series: Jewish and Persian Tales. These Persian Tales are over 2000 years old and teach ‘the way of happiness.’

Epic Heroes: The story of Rustum and Sohrab, Persian heroes from the Shahnameh as told by Ferdowsi, who you will meet, by the way, in this month’s My World Story Book.

My World Story Book includes stories of great men from the Bible as well as other Middle Eastern figures, even a modern day real life Indiana Jones.

Great Lives, Month 6: I am very excited to bring you stories of Jewish heroes, written by a Jew, from an out of print book that I haven’t found a copy anywhere yet except for the copy I happened to pick up at a used book sale. You will also find chapters on the Parsi religion as well as Judaism, from the book Had You Been Born in Another Faith.

New Month 5 books are now in the store. They include:

Imaginative Tales from France and Canada. French fairy tales offer us stories of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood--and others. Canadian Tales offer us stories from the Native Americans of Canada.

Epic and Legendary Heroes is the story of Roland, who served under the great Charlemagne.

Great Lives--by rotation includes several additional stories of great women of France as well as a look at 3 of France's kings.
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My World Story Book continues to offer you stories from Arthur Mee's 1000 Heroes.

The new Month 4 books are now in the store:

Imaginative Series includes stories of Greek and Roman mythology, Aesop fables as told by popular folklorist, Joseph Jacobs and legends from Italy as told by Amy Steedman. I don't differentiate between Greek and Roman--that can be a fun activity for you and your kids to determine if the Greek or Roman mythological name was used.

My World Story Book continues to share stories of lives of familiar as well as lesser known men and women--all with the purpose of inspiring worthy attributes in your own lives. Just like Plutarch.

Epic and Legendary Heroes: I packed a lot in this book. You will find retellings of The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aenied by master storyteller, Alfred Church, all written with young listeners in mind. Also, there is a retelling by Mary MacGregor of Charles Kingsley's The Heroes, introducing your young children to Perseus, Jason and Theseus. Mary's style is very similar to H.E. Marshall, who I know many of you are familiar with.

Great Lives rotation revision includes Plutarch's Lives as retold by F.J. Gould as well as a few other stories of great Italians and other Month 4 topics.

As per usual, these books are NOT designed to be read cover to cover in a single sitting. Rather, there is much to layer in over the years. Lots of opportunity to revisit and review.