From School Library Journal
Grade 1-3?Nine-year-old Teigen tells what it's like to be a home schooler. She describes her daily routine?prayers and working on specific subjects in the morning; helping her mother with chores or baby-sitting in the afternoon; music and art; nature study; field trips; and a weekly cooperative day at a local church facility where home schoolers meet to have gym, science, and history classes and time to socialize. She also describes some days when everything goes wrong and classes are canceled due to family emergencies. Teigen and her home-schooled friends all appear to be white, and the book's tone is so upbeat that readers may wonder why anyone goes to regular schools. The one-page afterword for parents gives a simplified overview of the home-schooling process. Although this title is limited in scope, there is little else available for this age group on the topic. The hand-tinted photographs show a pleasant family and a serious Teigen, who seems to thoroughly enjoy her lifestyle.?Rosanne Cerny, Queens Borough Public Library, NY
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gr. 2^-4. The only wrong note here is the hand-tinted photographs, which give an unattractive, yellowish cast to the book's nine-year-old narrator, Teigen, and to her family. Otherwise, this is an informative, nicely handled introduction to home schooling that smoothly blends routine aspects of learning at home with some of the reasons families select to home school. In an unpretentious narrative, Teigen talks about her family's school routine, her tutors, textbooks, field trips, and get-togethers with kids in public schools. Teigen's mom is presented as the primary teacher, but her dad is shown as also being involved; so are her younger sisters (two of whom aren't school age), who occasionally disrupt things but also sometimes take part in the learning activities. A book that demystifies and highlights the advantages of an educational option that is gaining popularity, with additional perspectives on home schooling presented in an interesting afterword.
Stephanie Zvirin
--This text refers to the
School & Library Binding
edition.