Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis~ REVIEW

I have always enjoyed writing and reading in my leisure time even when I was little.  Unfortunately none of my kiddos feel the same way.  Okay, maybe the reading part...but one thing they struggled with was writing and this next Review is a Sharon Watson product.  We have used a few of her products already and have seen Mahala grow the most in her writing.  To a point where she enjoys journaling and narrating after reading.  Several weeks now we have been using Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis from Writing with Sharon Watson and once again we are really enjoying it. 
Here is what we received

• Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis 
• Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis, Teacher’s Guide
• Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis, Quiz and Answer Manual
• Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crises Novel Notebook {PDF}

It's designed for High school students, so even though there is a Teacher's Guide Mahala normally works independently and that's just fine with me.  We decided to kind of skip around, because some of the reading towards the back we had already read recently.  All of the reads of course has a Character in Crisis, shocking right?  :)  All writing pieces are included except the novels I've highlighted bellow.

• A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell
• Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
• A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett
• The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
• Haircut” by Ring Lardner
• The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton
• Of the Passing of the First-Born by W. E. B. Du Bois
• A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Student’s choice
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

We started out looking through the Teacher's and Student's guide and printed the Novel Notebook.  We noticed that the exact reading books are listed with the ISBN and provided on the website for purchase.  We had all the books already, but most of them were not the specific edition.  No big deal, the only problem is this course offers a handy feature where exact page numbers are used throughout the student guide.  Pretty neat feature to have, but not necessary.  Mahala had no issues, but I could see where if I was doing this with Kaden he would totally be overwhelmed not having the exact book version.  I can also see how this feature would be super helpful for someone with special needs locate info between the guide and reading book to reference and find answers.

We started with The Hobbit and I flipped learning more about the Author, I love the little pics and Bio of the Authors!  I for one never got into this book, so the past several weeks we have been reading this together, because everyone else in my Family loves it.  For me the first few lessons really helped set me up to better understand the story, the characters and the overall old English language.  The Fun Facts were also a nice touch and all the extra like a link to learn more about runes and the online quizes.  I thought this was going to be Mahala's work, but I ended up very much involved with this specific book and I enjoyed it.  If my Highschool Teacher would have presented this book to our class like this I would have been delighted with it.  I found even the vocabulary words challenging, but interesting.  We did a few of the listed activities, like baking bread, writing a poem and Mahala plans on coming up with a theme song for Gollum...I'm scared what that's going to sound like. :)

Mahala also read A Jury of Her Peers and started Frankenstein.  One of the things she said was that in the Activity choices, she really appreciated that after listing the options there is an explanation.  Many times with other programs there is just the list, but this offers you a little brainstorming session.  She said it was very helpful.  I also want to add the Quiz and Answer manual are simple to use, straight forward and I really like the font size.  It just looks bright and clean, it's really like that with all the books.  It's so helpful when it's visually appealing and not overwhelming with color and clip art.  Several times we were away from internet and did the quizes in the manual instead of online.  We also used the free Novel Notebook also on those days.

Ok, so this course is meant for 2 semesters....depending on your readers.  There is a recommended schedule, I did look at it and used it looooosely!  I was happy with the amount of work given, the background info covered and even the awesome collection of reads.  I look forward to getting her other Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide.  Make sure you Connect with Writing with Sharon Watson on Social Media .  Also You can take a look and download some Samples from this Course and the other one I mentioned before you buy.

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