20th Century Literature

Sonlight 330 Literature / Language Arts Course
SKU
S-330-MD
$371.67
Age Range: 16-18 & above
Grade Range: 10-12
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High school literature books, complete lesson plans, schedule and teaching notes for the entire year. This package includes the Level 330 20th Century Literature Parent Guide and accompanying 20th Century Literature Student Guide. This high school literature curriculum package also includes all of the 20th Century Literature books scheduled in these guides.

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Take up to one year to use your curriculum. If you don’t love it, return it! Complete details here.

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Get high school literature books, complete lesson plans, schedule and teaching notes for the entire year. Sonlight Package includes the Level 330 20th Century Literature Parent Guide and accompanying 20th Century Literature Student Guide. This high school literature curriculum package also includes all of the 20th Century Literature books scheduled in these guides.

Overview of the Literature

Instructor's Guides

The Literature 330 course can be largely self-taught. Your children are able to chart their own course with help from the Literature and Language Arts Student Guide. The corresponding Parent Guide lets you jump in at any time to assess learning or engage in meaningful discussion.

20th Century Literature

My daughter once described 330 Literature as "an embarrassment of riches." She helped revise it some years back, and came away astonished by the power and beauty in this course. With 330, I'm challenged, I'm grieved, I'm amused, I'm enthralled – all by turns. That happens in the other Sonlight programs, too, but I think the emotion is more, and deeper, here.

The books follow a rough chronological progression. The school year begins with The Great Brain, a children's book set in the late 1800s. One of the chapters describes how the family got a flush toilet, the first in the town. The big struggle in this book is with an older brother who is selfish and greedy. By the end of the book, he reforms.

Contrast that with one of the last books assigned, Alas, Babylon. Although it was written in 1959, when the threat of nuclear annihilation loomed large, it reads like a modern dystopian survival thriller. Where does one go for water, when all the surrounding communities have been destroyed?

In less than 100 years, the world went from the wonder of flush toilets to the horror of nuclear annihilation.

So that's the big-picture progression.

Sonlight's 330 Lit has a range of genres: dystopian, sci fi, the Great American Novel (Gatsby), novella, lyric poetry, travel narrative (or, maybe, anthropology, or adventure), absurdism, murder mystery, thriller, memoir, Shakespearean comedy (okay, that isn't 20th Century, but it connects with another book, and … it's Shakespeare!), historical fiction, and novel. Because "literary" works can be dark or difficult, the schedule tries to break up the more intense works with enjoyable, thoughtful books.

Among the more challenging works, 330 includes Brave New World, the remarkably prescient book that foresaw a culture dedicated to entertainment and pleasure.

The Great Gatsby is a compulsively readable story set in the Roaring Twenties. (One teacher challenged her students to find a single sentence they could improve on in the book, and none could. Whatever you think of the lifestyle of characters, the prose itself is stunning.)

Heart of Darkness, set in the Belgian Congo, has one of the most robust vocabularies I've ever read, and a few famous lines: "the fascination of the abomination" and, for the dissolute man facing death: "The horror! The horror!" This is an incredible book even without knowing that this is an eyewitness account of actual atrocities that took place during the reign of King Leopold.

Kafka's Metamorphosis, about a man who wakes to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach, portrays the isolation many people felt in the modern age.

Among the less-challenging works, 330 includes one of my favorite Agatha Christie novels. The world's best-selling author, she sold over a billion copies of her mysteries, known for their surprise endings. (By contrast, the Harry Potter series has sold about 450 million.) Meet the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot as he finds out whodunit.

Kon-Tiki is the story of a man who wondered if perhaps the Polynesian Islands were settled by people sailing west from South America, rather than east from Asia. He constructed a balsa raft, recruited some men to go with him, and set afloat. This is the story of their astonishing journey.

One of the most beautiful books ever written, Cry, the Beloved Country, takes place in South Africa. A minister goes to seek his son, who has fallen into trouble in the city. Somehow the language holds the rhythms of Africa, and the words are unimaginably beautiful. In one of my favorite scenes, the grieving minister has gone to seek consolation, and sits as a preacher reads Scripture to him and the congregation: "It was not only a voice of gold, but it was the voice of a man whose heart was golden, reading from a book of golden words. And the people were silent, and Kumalo was silent, for when are three such things found in one place together?"

Whether or not your children have a voice of gold, may they have hearts of gold, and may they love the Book of golden words.

Language Arts

Fully integrated with the Literature, this year's Language Arts builds on past years and continues to develop literary analysis, creative writing, research, and essay skills, with weekly writing assignments in a range of lengths and topics.

Estimated daily time for 20th Century World Literature: Student: 1 hr.

Instructor's Guide
  • Literature 330 Parent Guide
    Complete lesson plans and teaching helps you need to effectively teach Level 330 Literature and Language Arts for the entire year.
    Retail: $64.00
  • Literature 330 Student Guide
    The daily schedule and tools your student needs for Level 330, Literature and Language Arts for the entire year.
    Retail: $37.00
Readers
  • Children of the River
    Multiple award-winner. A stunning tale of cultural pressures felt by a Cambodian girl who finds herself a refugee in late 20th Century United States.
    Retail: $7.99
  • Parallel Journeys
    The author interweaves the personal narratives of Helen Waterford, a German Jewish woman who got married only days after Hitler came to power in 1933, and Alfons Heck, 10 years old when he proudly joined...
    Retail: $7.99
  • The Snow Goose
    A simple yet moving story of love and faithfulness and duty . . . concerning a hunch backed man, a young girl, and a snow goose . . . all climaxing at the Battle of Dunkirk. A perennial favorite since...
    Retail: $19.95
  • Alas, Babylon
    An engaging modern-day Robinson Crusoe adventure: survival after a nuclear attack that destroys all civilization outside the confines of a small Florida town.
    Retail: $17.99
  • Brave New World
    A bleak look at a utopian world in which human beings are made to love servitude and totalitarian government crafted by author Aldous Huxley.
    Retail: $16.99
  • The Contender
    Alfred Brooks, an inner-city high school dropout, learns, through the disciplines of boxing, what it takes to win the battles of life. Fascinating, moving, and--trade places--all too real!
    Retail: $8.99
  • Cry, the Beloved Country
    The magnificent, deeply moving story of a dignified Zulu pastor and his son in mid-20th Century South Africa: a land driven by racial injustice. A classic work of love, hope, courage and endurance. Sad...
    Retail: $17.00
  • The Tempest
    This version of the Tempest by William Shakespeare has modern English side-by-side with the original text.
    Retail: $7.99
  • The Wednesday Wars
    Holling is a 7th-grade boy forced to spend Wednesday afternoons dissecting Shakespeare with his teacher who, he is certain, "hates his guts." You'll grow with him through the uproars of adolescence and...
    Retail: $8.99
  • The Great Brain
    Tom, The Great Brain, puts his mind to use in creating all manner of hilarious mischief in a turn-of-the-century Utah town!
    Retail: $8.99
  • The Wave
    Two students, Laurie and David, realize they must stop a dangerous movement before it's too late. Let this sobering drama, based on actual events, spark thoughtful discussion with your family.
    Retail: $7.99
  • The Great Gatsby
    The quintessential novel of "Roaring 20s" America.
    Retail: $17.00
  • Hope Was Here
    This is "comfort food" in print! Hope and her aunt move from New York to Wisconsin to run a diner. The kind owner runs for mayor against the corrupt incumbent. Hope's positive determination will leave...
    Retail: $10.99
  • My Father's Daughter
    Young Winston Carmichael and his handicapped younger sister have been virtual prisoners in their mansion since birth. Years before, their elder half sister, Caroline was kidnapped. Believed dead, she...
    Retail: $8.99
  • The Great Gilly Hopkins
    A foster girl learns what true love is and what it means to belong. Riveting. A book you'll read over and over.
    Retail: $7.99
  • Robert Frost's Poems
    This thorough Robert Frost anthology (over 100 poems) should be a home library essential.
    Retail: $8.99
  • Heart of Darkness
    Set in turn-of-the-century Congo, West Africa, Heart of Darkness is considered one of this century's literary masterpieces. This book by author Joseph Conrad is a study in human corruption and despair.
    Retail: $5.00
  • Heart to Heart
    This book combines full-color reprints of famous American works of art (Harper, Pollock, Man Ray, Lichtenstein, O'Keeffe, and many more) accompanied by poems.
    Retail: $22.95
  • Kon-Tiki
    Kon-Tiki is the classic true tale of men against the sea and against scientific orthodoxy.
    Retail: $8.99
  • The Metamorphosis
    Classic Kafka book: the story of a young man who, transformed into a giant insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family and an outsider in his own home. Asks what it means to be truly and fully...
    Retail: $6.95
  • The Moves Make the Man
    Jerome Foxworthy tells the story of his friend, a white boy named Bix. Basketball--played straight or with fakes--becomes an allegory for life. Engrossing. Brilliantly written.
    Retail: $9.99
  • Murder on the Orient Express
    The famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is traveling on the unusually crowded Orient Express when a notorious gangster is found murdered.
    Retail: $8.99
  • The Old Man and the Sea
    A towering story of man against nature, victory in defeat. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is haunting and deep.
    Retail: $13.99
  • Walk Two Moons
    Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech is a deep, exquisitely-textured story, full of symbolism, about a 13-year-old girl, her parents and grandparents, and about relationships, living and dying. A story that...
    Retail: $8.99
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100% MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE

Take up to one year to use your curriculum. If you don’t love it, return it! Complete details here.

Have a Question?

Contact Customer Service

Available 7am-5pm MT Mon-Fri.

1-800-903-1675