A few years ago I went to a homeschool convention and talked to someone in a booth who was selling literature guides. I was interested in a couple books for my teenage daughter. I had never read the books, but had seen them recommended for high schoolers. The woman assured me there was nothing offensive in the books and that they would be appropriate for my daughter to read. Fortunately I previewed the books myself. I did not approve of the content of the books for my daughter. In general I try to use Philippians 4:8 as a standard for what I put into my own mind.

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things."

On this page, I'll present material in the books used, or considered, for the study guides that some may consider objectionable, so you can judge whether they are appropriate for your children.

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Unlike Orwell's 1984 which contains a strong sexual theme, Animal Farm has very little objectionable material. There is no bad language. Mr. Jones is an alcoholic and there is the senseless murder of other animals by the ruling pigs, although there are no gruesome details.

Cry, The Beloved Country, Alan Paton

This is a beautiful book, but deals with the realities of life in South Africa during the years just before Apartheid became the official policy of the country. Kumalo is an African priest in a small village. His brother, John, sister, Gertrude, and son, Absalom, left the village for the big city of Johannesburg. Absalom, with two friends, murders a white man (not graphically described). Gertrude, makes and sells alcohol and is a prostitute. John lives with a woman that is not his wife. Absalom's teenage girlfriend is pregnant with Absalom's child. The author does not go into extensive details about these sinful behaviors and they are clearly presented as wrong. I have included quotes below showing the most explicit passages.

p. 52 Discussing the violence in Johannesburg - "It was not long ago that a gang of these youths attacked one of our own African girls; they took her bag, and her money, and would have raped her too but that people came running out of the houses."

p. 53 Discussing Kumalo's sister, Gertrude - "... she has no husband now. It would be truer to say, that she has many husbands."

"... she makes it and sells it (liquor). These women sleep with any man for their price. A man has been killed at her place. They gamble and drink and stab. She has been in prison, more than once."

p. 119 Kumalo contemplating how someone could take another person's life - "What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?"

p. 146 Kumalo confronting Absalom's young girlfriend. A desire to hurt her (emotionally not physically) came over him and he asked her if she would take him for her 4th husband - "She laughed nervously, and looked about her, and picked strips of wood from the box. But she felt his eyes upon her, and she said in a low voice, I could be willing. He sat down and covered his face with his hands; and she, seeing him, fell to sobbing, a creature shamed and tormented. And he, seeing her, and the frailty of her thin body, was ashamed also, but for his cruelty, not her compliance. ... I am sorry, he said. I am ashamed that I asked you such a question."

p. 219 A police officer calls John Kumalo a b******, the only profanity in the book.

The Hiding Place/The Sunflower

The subject matter of these two books is the Holocaust, that in itself is something each parent can decide whether or when your child is ready to handle. Neither book goes into extremely graphic detail about the Nazi atrocities. However, in The Sunflower, Wiesenthal describes a Nazi soldier's confession that involves a number of Jewish people being forced into a house, the house set on fire, and Jewish people, including a child, falling or jumping from the windows.