Yesterday's Classic

Books. I love books. In fact, if you were to show up at my house at this very moment you would find seven bookcases of various sizes that hold over 1,000 books. Plus I have seven boxes of books scattered about that I intend to sell at a used book sale later this month. I should mention that I live in a 14x70 foot mobile home. My living room in tiny, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love books.

That could be why I was absolutely thrilled to be chosen to review Yesterday's Classics as part of the TOS Homeschool Crew.  

    

What is Yesterday's Classics? They republish classic children's book in to easily read paperbacks. The books were originally published between 1890 and 1920 (when the character of the children in the book taught excellent qualities). Most books even include the original illustrations. 

Yesterday's Classics has also begun offering all of their 225 titles in eBook formats.  They offer them either for the Kindle or in EPUB format. You can purchase individual book titles for $2-$5 each. You can also purchase all 225 books at once. Yesterday's Classics is currently offering this collection for sale through May 31st for only $99.95.

     

One reason I was so excited about getting this product is that many of the titles are used in the curriculum we just switched to - Tapestery of Grace. Heart of Dakota, Ambleside Online, Pageant of History and Living Books Curriculum also use many of the titles. They even make it easy for you by listing by year the books used for the three curricula I linked to above.

What I thought:

I was very excited to receive this product. I will say this right up front - Yesterday's Classics makes it super easy to use this electronic product. Four "how to" pdf files arrived along with the books. Two explain how to download the books from the zip files and add them to your eReader or computer. While the second shares gives a great breakdown on available eReaders. 

Since I don't own an eReader (yet), I ended up deciding to go with the Mobipocket eReader. This is a free reader that works right on your computer. It's been wonderful and I chose to use this based on recommendations from Yesterday's Classics.

   

The other two pdf files are all about the books. One includes book descriptions for every book included. The second is full of lists that break down the books in various ways - age level, genre, title, grade range, etc. Both files are wonderful to help locate a specific book.

If you'd like a peak at one of the books to see if you'd like them, you can scroll about a quarter of the way down this page and download a free copy of The Dutch Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins. 

The 225 books include:

• 9 world history books
• 6 children of the world books
• 27 nature books
• 29 books about ancient Greece
• 5 fables books
• 18 books about ancient Rome
• 14 books for kindergarten age children
• 12 fairy tale books
• 9 books about Britain
• 2 books about Shakespeare
• 10 books about faith
• 5 books about early civilization
• 5 poetry books
• 17 books about the Middle Ages
• 14 books about legends
• 9 books about the Renaissance and Exploration 
• 7 science books
• 4 reader books
• 18 books about American History
• 6 books about Christmas stories
• 5 literature books
• 10 biography books

Phew! That's a lot of books!!!

    

Overall I thought this was an excellent resource. The formatting makes the books super easy to read. I've seen many free public domain books on the web. They can be hard to read due to poor scanning or other issues. All of the Yesterday's Classics that I was able to look at were very easy to read - even on a computer screen.

As a professed book lover, having an additional 225 regular books added to my house right now would have been impossible. Having these in an eBook format was fantastic. I am growing to like eBooks more and more. This is also prompting me to ask for a Nook for Mother's Day.

However, don't forget, if you much prefer a regular paper book, Yesterday's Classics does offer those as well!

Head over to the TOS Homeschool Crew blog to check out what others had to say about this product.



Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review.  All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.