Stages 1 – 10
The curriculum in ten stages
From fables and fairy tales in stage 1 to the classics of philosophy and faith in stage 10, each stage prepares for the next. Children do well starting stage 1 around age 8 and climbing one stage a year; adults can begin wherever they like. We use the full original text; for long works we read the key chapters.
Stage 1 Fables and Fairy Tales
Aesop's Fables
Short animal fables, each with one lesson, that build the habit of finding and stating a story's meaning.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Other Tales
Short tales of Peter Rabbit and his friends that teach vivid words through simple sentences.
Just So Stories
Playful tales of how animals came to look as they do, written to be read aloud.
The Velveteen Rabbit
A toy rabbit who longs to become real through a child's love; short, but full of questions to discuss.
Grimms' Fairy Tales
German folk tales such as Hansel and Gretel, read close to their original shape to learn how stories are built.
Andersen's Fairy Tales
Tales like The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid that pair sadness with courage and invite reading characters' feelings.
The Story of Doctor Dolittle
A doctor who talks to animals sails off to save sick monkeys; dialogue-rich and easy to follow.
Winnie-the-Pooh
Gentle everyday adventures of Pooh and his friends, full of wordplay and warm friendship.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Dorothy's journey home with friends who each want something, a clear frame for comparing characters.
The Adventures of Pinocchio
A wooden puppet whose nose grows when he lies learns, mistake by mistake, what growing up means.
Stage 2 Worlds of Imagination
Heidi
A girl living with her grandfather in the Alps learns what home and people mean after a stay in the city.
The Wind in the Willows
Mole, Rat and Toad's riverbank life, read slowly for its landscapes and friendships.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice falls into a nonsensical world, and readers learn to play with words and logic.
The Jungle Book
Mowgli, raised by wolves, learns the Law of the Jungle, opening questions about rules and belonging.
Five Children and It
A sand fairy grants wishes that go wrong each day, a playful study in cause and effect.
The Railway Children
Three siblings move beside a country railway after their father disappears and grow by helping others.
The Princess and the Goblin
A princess and a miner's boy face a goblin plot in a story about trust and courage.
Pollyanna
A girl who finds something to be glad about in everything slowly changes her town.
Black Beauty
A horse tells his own life story, showing how people treat animals through his eyes.
A Little Princess
Sara goes from rich pupil to servant overnight and holds on to imagination and dignity.
Stage 3 Growing Up and Friendship
A Christmas Carol
Miserly Scrooge is changed by three spirits in one night, read in full over fifteen lessons.
The Secret Garden
Two lonely children grow well together as they bring a neglected garden back to life.
Little Women
Four sisters wait for their father during the Civil War and grow up with their own dreams and flaws.
Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)
Wendy and her brothers fly to Neverland with the boy who won't grow up, a story that asks what growing up means.
Anne of Green Gables
Imaginative orphan Anne finds family and friends in a small village, with richly expressive language.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mischievous Tom gets caught up in treasure and a crime in a Mississippi river town.
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
Episodes of Robin Hood and his band in Sherwood Forest, opening talk about justice and loyalty.
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights
Arthur draws the sword and becomes king; tales of the Round Table that weigh honor and promises.
The Swiss Family Robinson
A shipwrecked family builds a home on a deserted island, a story of solving problems together.
Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Two early American tales: a man who sleeps twenty years and the legend of the Headless Horseman.
Stage 4 Adventure and Voyage
Treasure Island
Young Jim gets a treasure map and sails against pirates, learning to read hidden motives.
Robinson Crusoe
A castaway records twenty-eight years alone on an island, a story of survival and self-examination.
Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's voyages to lands of tiny and giant people show how satire holds up a mirror to society.
Around the World in Eighty Days
Phileas Fogg races to circle the globe in eighty days on a bet, tracking time and geography.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
A professor and his nephew descend through a volcano into the earth, a tale of scientific imagination.
Kidnapped
David is kidnapped by his scheming uncle and escapes across the Scottish Highlands.
The Prince and the Pauper
A prince and a poor boy who look alike trade places and see injustice in each other's lives.
Tales from Shakespeare
Twenty Shakespeare plays retold as prose stories, an early meeting with plays read in later grades.
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
Greek myths such as Medusa and King Midas, retold as stories told to children.
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
A poor Dutch brother and sister face a skating race and their father's illness together.
Stage 5 Trial and Courage
The Call of the Wild
Buck, stolen to pull sleds in the Klondike, rediscovers his instincts, told from the dog's point of view.
White Fang
A wild wolf-dog is gradually tamed, raising questions about how surroundings shape character.
Oliver Twist
Orphan Oliver makes his way from the workhouse through London's underworld, a novel of social criticism.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Twelve short cases in which Holmes reasons from observation, teaching how evidence leads to conclusions.
The Time Machine
A time traveller finds two races of humans in the far future, prompting thought about society and progress.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
A scientific voyage beneath the sea aboard the mysterious Nautilus with Captain Nemo.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck and Jim, an escaped slave, raft down the Mississippi as conscience clashes with society's rules.
The Odyssey
Odysseus spends ten years finding his way home after the Trojan War, an epic of cunning and endurance.
Le Morte d'Arthur
Key episodes from the medieval prose collection of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Key chapters of a wrongly imprisoned man's escape and revenge, asking where justice ends and vengeance begins.
Stage 6 Good, Evil and Honour
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
A lawyer uncovers a doctor's secret double life, a short novel about good and evil within one person.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Holmes investigates the legend of a cursed hound on the moors in this full-length mystery.
The War of the Worlds
Martians invade England, and the story watches how people act in fear and what civilization means.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Fairies' mischief tangles four lovers in a forest; a comedy for reading Shakespeare's lines aloud.
The Red Badge of Courage
A young Civil War soldier's fear and courage, followed from inside his own mind.
Great Expectations
Pip, raised to be a gentleman by an unknown benefactor, learns about class, gratitude and loyalty.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
An English nobleman secretly rescues people from the French Revolution while hiding his identity.
The Importance of Being Earnest
A comedy of lies over a name, full of witty lines and social satire.
The Three Musketeers
Young d'Artagnan and three musketeers fight a plot to protect the queen, a story of friendship and adventure.
Ivanhoe
The knight Ivanhoe in medieval England, a story of justice and prejudice between rival groups.
Stage 7 Love and Conscience
Romeo and Juliet
Two young people from feuding families fall in love; a tragedy for debating haste and fate.
Julius Caesar
Brutus and Antony's speeches after Caesar's murder show how persuasion works.
The Iliad
The wrath of Achilles in the Trojan War, showing how the ancients thought about honor and death.
Antigone
Antigone defies the king to bury her brother, a play for debating conscience against law.
Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth and Darcy revise their first impressions of each other; reading what dialogue leaves unsaid.
Frankenstein
A scientist creates life and abandons it, a novel that asks about responsibility and loneliness.
Jane Eyre
Orphan Jane becomes a governess and chooses her life while holding to her own principles.
A Tale of Two Cities
Characters move between London and Paris during the French Revolution in a novel of sacrifice and renewal.
The Scarlet Letter
A woman made to wear a mark of sin in a Puritan town, a novel about shame and hypocrisy.
Don Quixote
Key chapters of the old man who reads himself into knighthood and rides out with Sancho Panza.
Stage 8 Fate and Freedom
Macbeth
A general murders his king after a witches' prophecy and falls, a tragedy of ambition and guilt.
The Merchant of Venice
A bond for a pound of flesh and its trial scene open debate on mercy, justice and prejudice.
Oedipus the King
A king searching for the cause of a plague discovers who he is, a tragedy of knowledge and fate.
Wuthering Heights
Love and revenge across two generations on the moors, told through more than one narrator.
Les Misérables
Key chapters from the life of Jean Valjean, jailed for stealing bread, weighing law against mercy.
Silas Marner
A lonely weaver loses his gold, raises an abandoned child and returns to his community.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A young man stays youthful while his portrait ages, a novel about beauty and morality.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Douglass's own account of escaping slavery, and of how learning to read opened the way to freedom.
Walden
Key chapters from two years of simple living in a cabin by Walden Pond, asking what a life really needs.
Emma
Emma's matchmaking goes wrong again and again until she learns to see herself clearly.
Stage 9 Justice and Redemption
Hamlet
Prince Hamlet hesitates to avenge his father; his soliloquies probe the gap between thought and action.
Inferno (The Divine Comedy, Part I)
Dante descends through Hell with the poet Virgil, tracing an ordered vision of sin and punishment.
The Aeneid
Aeneas escapes Troy to found Rome's future, an epic of duty set against personal desire.
The Republic
Key books of Socrates' dialogue on justice, including the Allegory of the Cave.
The Prince
A cool-eyed guide to gaining and keeping power, for debating ends and means.
Crime and Punishment
A poor student who justifies a murder is hunted by his own conscience, followed from inside his mind.
Heart of Darkness
Marlow travels up the Congo River in a novella that questions imperialism and human darkness.
The Great Gatsby
Gatsby tries to win back a lost love in 1920s New York, a novel about dreams and wealth.
Paradise Lost (Books I–II)
Books I–II, with Satan's speeches after his fall, for analyzing how a voice of evil can persuade.
Meditations
A Roman emperor's private notes to himself on governing emotions and attending to duty.
Stage 10 The Great Questions of Life
King Lear
An old king measures love by words and loses everything, a tragedy about telling truth from flattery.
The Brothers Karamazov
Key chapters, including The Grand Inquisitor, from three brothers' story around their father's murder.
Faust, Part One
A scholar who longs to know everything makes a wager with the devil, a verse drama on the cost of desire.
Nicomachean Ethics
Key books of Aristotle's lectures on the good life, introducing virtue, the mean and habit.
Confessions
Key books of Augustine's account of his restless youth and conversion, a model of reflective writing.
Moby-Dick
Key chapters of Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt for the white whale, read for its symbols.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
A successful judge reviews his life as he falls ill, a novella that asks what it means to live well.
Candide
A young man taught that all is for the best suffers every disaster, a satire that tests optimism.
The Federalist Papers
Key essays, such as Nos. 10 and 51, written to win ratification of the U.S. Constitution, read for their argument.
Apology
Socrates' defense speech at his trial, analyzed as speech that stands by its convictions.
