Last year I wrote about how I was buckling down to finish the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Well, it was worth it: the book will be out next month!

It’s called Thriving in the 21^st Century: Preparing Our Children For The New Economic Reality, and I wrote it to explain what has changed in our economy and what specific things we can do to help prepare our children for a world of work much different than the one we grew up in.

Here’s what it will say on the back cover:

Today’s children will reach adulthood in an economic environment unlike anything the world has ever seen. The 21st century global economy is powered by an increasing rate of technological change as well as growing foreign competition; both are contributing to the high U.S. unemployment rate and stagnating American wages. How can we as parents prepare our children for success in this growing maelstrom that many are now calling “the new normal”?

In Thriving in the 21st Century, Barbara Frank demonstrates that we must move beyond the common wisdom of the 20th century that emphasized a college diploma and lifelong employment with a large company as the only way to success. Instead, we need to set our children on a new path, one that will help them not just survive, but thrive in the 21st century.

In this book, you’ll learn:

• The Seven Strengths your child will need to prosper in the 21st century, why they’re needed and how you can develop them in your children
• The most efficient (and increasingly popular) way to give your child those Seven Strengths
• Why public education has failed to prepare our children for the 21st century
• How we can help our children become the lifelong learners needed in a rapidly changing global economy
• The surprising truth about today’s colleges and universities
• How economic change is affecting a variety of career areas, and which of them are projected to grow dramatically in the coming years.

This book is packed with ideas and resources for raising our children to become adults who respond proactively when faced with economic challenges, and who can prosper during times of great change. We can help our children reach young adulthood ready and able to tackle the future with all its challenges. And that, of course, is the key: we must prepare our children for the future…not the past.

The book’s website is www.Thrivinginthe21stCentury.com. There’s already a lot of information there, and more to come in the near future.

I hope you’ll find this book inspiring and informative.

We have a new book out just this week. And my husband painted the cover art! Learn more about this “new old” book below:

Do your boys enjoy reading? Do you have trouble finding books that catch their interest and are good for them to read? Then you’ll love Shovelhorns, the Biography of a Moose, and Black Bruin, the Biography of a Bear, two classic novels in one new book.

These two wildlife animal stories will captivate your boys. These aren’t namby-pamby tales but realistic adventures written by naturalist Clarence Hawkes in the early 1900’s: classic stories which boys will enjoy.

Best of all, you’ll get two of Clarence Hawkes’ wildlife adventures in one book. Readers of all ages will love these stories, but especially boys who enjoy the outdoors and stories that don’t hold back from telling about the life and death struggles that occur in the wild.

Shovelhorns, the Biography of a Moose, first published in 1909, is the story of a moose in the harsh woods of New Brunswick, Canada. Relive the life of this moose as he grows from a small calf to a great bull moose. Learn how his mother protects him from a fierce wolf pack. As he matures, he experiences his own adventures and battles, including his be­friend­ing by the son of a Northern hunting guide, and the inevitable time in his life when he must prove he is deserving of the title “King of the Wilderness.”

Following this story is another exciting adventure. Black Bruin, the Biography of a Bear, first published in 1908, is the story of a black bear in northern New York. You’ll be hooked from the start as you read the exciting circumstances of how Black Bruin becomes part of a young farmer’s family. This black bear from the wild desires freedom, and his strength and appetite bring him constant conflict. You’ll be enthralled reading the many trials Black Bruin faces as he strives to be “King of the Mountain.”

Clarence Hawkes’ storytelling will keep your boys (and you) turning the pages and wanting to read more of his wildlife adventures from this exciting era. Both stories are beautifully illustrated by Charles Copeland.

DOWNLOAD TWO FREE SAMPLES FROM THIS BOOK HERE: http://www.cardamompublishers.com/stories-for-boys.htm

Are you intimidated by the thought of homeschooling your kids all the way through high school? I was.

Do you worry that you’re not up to the challenge of homeschooling your teens? I did.

Do you wonder what it’s like, living with teenagers every day? I was pretty curious about that myself.

I never thought I’d homeschool my children all the way through high school. I wasn’t even sure I could do it. But I did, and I’m sure glad I did. But it wasn’t always easy, and there were times when I needed some encouragement.

You can have that encouragement, and get a little peek into the world of homeschooling teenagers in the process, with “Homeschooling Your Teenagers.” It’s an eBook with eleven articles* from the archives of “The Imperfect Homeschooler.” These articles are no longer available online….but you can have them for yourself now in Amazon Kindle eBook format for only 99 cents (reg. $7.95) by clicking here.

*Plus, there’s a list of links to online resources that will help you homeschool your teen for free!

There’s nothing like the feel of a fresh new book, right fellow book lovers? And I’ve got to tell you that seeing my name on it and knowing that it’s the result of a couple of years’ worth of work is a good feeling!

Hot off the press: Women of the Old Testament: 14 In-Depth Bible Studies for Teens with Mother-Daughter Discussion Starters, a book I wrote six years ago for our daughter Mary, who was 13 at the time.

We’d been using Rod and Staff’s Bible curriculum, which we both liked, but our girl was growing up and it was time for something different. I thought about just buying a Bible study and using it with her, but before I even had a chance to go shopping, it occurred to me that I could write my own. Having been part of an awesome weekly Bible study at my church for the previous 12 years, I was accustomed to going through every detail of a Bible story, then discussing it with others in the class. I thought that might be fun for Mary and me to do at home.

So I started out with Eve’s story in the book of Genesis. I wrote up questions as I read through the biblical account and kept track of the answers in a separate document. As I went along, different thoughts would occur to me, like “How awful would it be to live happily in the garden with God and then have to leave because of your sin?” I wrote down those thoughts, planning to save them to discuss them with Mary after she’d finished reading the story and answering detailed questions about it.

Those thoughts became the basis for some great discussions between us. As I continued to work through the Old Testament stories about women, I kept a list of those thoughts and questions. Some were so current, such as what it must have been like for Hannah to suffer from infertility. How many people today have dealt with the pain of infertility? It’s still a painful topic for many women. Mary and I were able to discuss this together, with her asking questions and me adding insight that came from having a relative who went through it.

So we fell into a pattern. I tried to keep about a week ahead of Mary, handing her assignments as I wrote them. (That wasn’t always easy but it kept me from bogging down in the project, that’s for sure.) Then we’d have these interesting conversations, where I often found myself illustrating the concepts by mentioning something I’d gone through in my own life, or as in the case of infertility, someone I knew or was related to had gone through in their life.

Mary asked some great questions! We sure touched on a variety of subjects whenever we had the discussion portion of our Bible study. We soon began looking forward to “our time” whenever she finished a unit.

When she finished the entire study, we were both kind of sad that it was over. I told her I’d try to write another study, this time about women in the New Testament, for the coming school year.

But life intervened: over the next few years our son graduated from college and got married, we had to sell our house (spent almost a year on the market—ugh) and we moved, then we moved again a few years later. And of course during that time our Mary grew up and finished homeschooling.

But I hadn’t forgotten the Old Testament study and how much we’d enjoyed it, so once we were settled here I decided that I should edit it and publish it sometime. My husband encouraged me to do it sooner rather than later, so back in January when I finally buckled down to daily writing again , I started editing it.

Originally I’d included some short essay questions for Mary to answer for each Bible story. Now I reread her answers to those questions, and it was so cool to see how much she’d grown since then (especially spiritually). Just seeing what she wrote in that young teenage scrawl of hers tickled me. That workbook is a keepsake now; it’s almost like a journal that she kept.

Like any project, publishing this Bible study took longer than I thought. Mary’s copy is a simple Word document, printed out and put in a notebook. The published version is how I wish I could have done it for her, with a feminine design, lots of flowers and a splash of pink. My husband, the artistic and tech-savvy half of our marriage, did a great job of figuring out what I wanted and putting it together. Thank you, dear! 

So off I go to put a great big check mark by “Mother-Daughter Bible Study” on my list of things to do. Meanwhile, here’s the official description:

Just published! “Women of the Old Testament, 14 In-Depth Bible Studies for Teens (With Mother-Daughter Discussion Starters)”

This new one-year Bible curriculum for teens age 13 and up is designed for the homeschool mom and her daughter(s) and was written by veteran homeschool mom Barbara Frank for her daughter.

It examines the stories of Old Testament women like Eve, Ruth and Esther and helps teens relate those stories to their own and their mothers’ lives:

* Detailed questions help students read stories carefully.

* Short essay questions measure students’ comprehension.

* Mother-daughter discussion starters examine themes in light of a mother’s life experiences, promoting mother-daughter closeness and understanding.

* The modern, feminine design of this workbook gives it a “journal” feel.

This book is arranged in an assignment format, and can be completed in one school year of daily work. The answer key is included for ease of correcting, with specific Bible references for every answer.

Most of the book is ideal for independent study; the Mother-Daughter Discussion Starters at the end of each section promote closeness and understanding between teens and their mothers, making this study unique.

Learning about Old Testament women together will make this your daughter’s favorite Bible study….and yours, too!

Now available at CardamomPublishers.com, Amazon.com and many other booksellers.

ISBN 978-0-9742181-5-1

Download a free unit from the book HERE.

We grew up in the public schools. We were both good students and obedient kids who didn’t really question why we were there until we got older. I can’t speak for my husband*, but my thought was that school was deadly boring but utterly unavoidable. If there was anyone homeschooling in the 1960s, we sure didn’t know about it.

But in 1983, when I read about the concept of homeschooling in a wonderful book called Home Grown Kids by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, that hackneyed light bulb went off over my head, and it’s been burning brightly ever since. Not send your kids to school? Trust them to learn at home in a much more efficient and interesting manner than school? My main thought was “Tell me more!”

I learned more, mostly through the Moores’ newsletter, and we eventually decided that homeschooling was for us, at least for a year. We figured at the end of a year we would know more about how homeschooling would work for us; if it was a dud, we could send our daughter into first grade with no harm done.

That first year went very well, and so did the next, and the next, and eventually I quit saying that we’d take it a year at a time. We became die-hards, and now, more than 25 years after I first learned about homeschooling, we’re still at it with the youngest of our four children.

But all those years of homeschooling had an effect on my husband and me far beyond just homeschooling. Once you realize that you don’t have to follow the crowd when it comes to educating your children, you start thinking about other ways to take the path less followed. In our case, it meant me staying home while my friends went back to work after several years off for baby-raising. After a while, it meant my husband starting a business in our home so he could help me with the daily work of raising four kids (one with developmental disabilities) and educating them. 

Now, we’re almost done homeschooling (our youngest is 17) and we want to continue the lifestyle homeschooling first brought us. My husband had to close his business after the exodus of U.S. manufacturing to China, but he now works in our publishing business, Cardamom Publishers, which lets both of us work from home. After nearly 30 years of home ownership, we sold our house in suburbia three years ago and enjoyed two years in a rental house in our favorite vacation spot before moving to our current rented home in southern Wisconsin, far from the crowds of suburbia. Who knows where we’ll go next? It’s fun being free to make changes.

Would any of this have happened if we hadn’t chosen to homeschool? I doubt it. We’d probably be like most people our age, like the people we went to school with when we were kids: both commuting to full-time jobs away from home, our children and each other. Our youngest would be in school, and our time together would be caught in bits and pieces here and there, along with an annual vacation (if everyone’s schedules could be coordinated).

Instead, we have time together as a family, and we love it. Nobody told me that homeschooling would change my husband and me.

* Although the fact that he slept through much of high school might give you some idea of the level of his enthusiasm!

Now we’ve added a free downloadable sample story from the book for those who’d like to ”look inside.” Let us know what you think!

Our new address is:

Cardamom Publishers

PO Box 2146

Janesville, WI 53547

Thanks for your patience while we made this transition!

If you’re in a hurry, you can order our books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christian Book Distributors, Discount Home School Supplies, Emmanuel Books, Rainbow Resource and many other booksellers.

BTW, there are Amazon links to our books on every page of this blog for your convenience.    

Be back soon!

Also, those of you who subscribe to The Old Schoolhouse magazine, check out page 72 of the new Fall issue for a familiar face  :)