GRAND ADVENTURES Book Club and Creative Writing Workshop

Join us and travel through a century of epic adventures - from the decks of great tall-masted ships to valleys where elves sing, and from tropical islands in the south seas to a wolf lair deep in the frozen tundra of the far north. These eight unforgettable books, read together, form a masterclass in storytelling, and offer wonderful jumping-off points for a creative writing curriculum packed with fun collaborative exercises and engaging writing assignments. Students (age 12-15) publish original work and build up impressive writing portfolios. Note: this class can be used as a 1.0 (~144 hours) homeschool language arts class - see course details, below.

Course dates: Semester 1: October 5 - January 28, 2026. (No classes Dec 21-Jan 1) Semester 2: February 4 - June 17, 2027. Students may join Grand Adventures at the beginning of any calendar month, space permitting.

Tuition: $288/full course, $170/Each Semester, $45/monthly.

Class size: 20 students max. Sign up early to avoid disappointment.

COURSE TEXTS:

October: The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton (1944)

November: The Voyage of the Frog by Gary Paulsen (1989)

December: Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo (1999)

January: The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter (1953)

February: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi (1990)

March: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

April: The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

May and June: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

Course Requirements: GRAND ADVENTURES students will need to log-on to our course forum on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Total weekly time commitment: 3-5 hours/week. All students will need access to a computer, and copies of the books listed above, to participate in this course.

Course details: This course is designed to serve two potential purposes: as a rigorous, meaningful extracurricular activity, or as part of a homeschool language arts course. This course may be used for a 1.0 (~144 hrs) credit by homeschool students: we provide a comprehensive syllabus, course outline, and certificate upon completion. We also provide grading rubrics, so that parent educators can grade their student's work for their homeschool transcript. NB: We do not grade student work.

Our primary goals in creating and delivering GRAND ADVENTURES: 1) grow student capacity to read and enjoy syntactically complex, non-contemporary fiction, 2) introduce a variety of genres and writing styles and create repeated experiences of writing as a joyful, generative experience; 3) create a supportive creative community in each cohort, 4) introduce students to the generative force of genre conventions and structures, 5) introduce students to the archetypal 'hero's journey.'

Note: the books in this course are all adventure novels, but the creative writing curriculum is not exclusively focused on writing adventure/quest-themed fiction.

Notes on the booklist: These books are widely available used, often for under $5. We recommend checking your local used bookstores and second hand shops, or ordering from Thriftbooks.com or used book sellers on Amazon. These books are all also widely available at public libraries; lining up borrowing dates with the course can be tricky, however, so we recommend buying a copy of each book. We strongly discourage the use of ebooks for this course. 

NB: Some titles are available in a variety of formats, including abridge and graphic novel editions. Please ensure you buy the original, full text.

Admission Guidelines: This course is open to students ages 12-15. This is a course designed to get students reading and understanding pre-digital age novels - books that are considerably more complex, less hold-the-reader's-hand, and richer on many levels than contemporary fiction for this age level. If your student can read books 4 or 5 in the Harry Potter series, or a Percy Jackson novel, or Roald Dahl's Matilda, they can succeed in this course.

If your student is generally ready but reads slowly, audiobooks are available for some of the titles in this course and may be a helpful tool. For all students, we recommend using an audiobook version of Treasure Island to complement the original text, and there are numerous free, high quality audio versions available - you'll find links to several versions we like in the course materials. We also highly recommend accessing a good audiobook version of The Hobbit - we recommend several in the course, including two that are available free - to help Tolkien's poems and songs come alive. That said, audiobooks must be used as a complement, not a replacement, for all texts, or you miss the fundamental purpose of the course - to skillfully expand student capacity to read dense, complex, old texts.

Avid reader but reluctant writer? We have worked with many young writers who bloom once they are in a writing community with purpose (other people will read and engage with their work!) and creative autonomy (important for all young writers - please, give your student creative space while working on this course: do not critique, edit, or compare your student's written work to that of other students!).

Code of Conduct:

All students must abide by our code of conduct while participating in our course forums:

1) Be nice. Don't be mean.

2) Be curious.

3) Abide by the online safety rules introduced on day 1 of each course (no sharing external links, no sharing last names or addresses, no profanity, etc).

4) Abide by the guidelines given in each course for responding to peer work.

5) No contemporary politics (discussing the historical political context of course texts is fine).