Joy Hakim's History of the U.S.

by Cindy
(Cortland, IL)

We used Joy Hakim's History of the U.S. for 9th grade American History from 2007-2008.

Likes: Ten book set is a compact, paperback series that is colorful and laid out very well. The pictures and amount of information in the series is outstanding and my 9th grader had very little trouble reading and comprehending the author's writing.

Dislikes: What I didn't like was that some of Ms. Hakim's opinion sometimes was given as "fact" in certain lessons. There are no lesson plans for these books, but you can access teacher's plans on PBS.org for the series that was aired a few years ago. There was a DVD collection of that PBS series, but it is out of print and hard to find.

Great High School Course

by Penny
(Louisiana)

This series consists of 11 books altogether. Each book is broken down into time periods. I think the books are best used for high school. I used them with my high schooler.

Each chapter is not very long. There are vocabulary words throughout the book. The books contain poems, and there are black and white and colored pictures throughout the book. Each picture has a small paragraph about it. There are maps telling about different things and biographies on different people in each book.

You could use these books for high school and nothing else as it is a complete history set. They are not like dry, boring texts. They are very interesting books. I like to read them myself. Each book has a timeline included at the end.

I love these books and can't wait to read them with my daughters, when they get older. They are very thorough.

Interesting and Entertaining!

by Teresa
(San Clemente, CA, USA)

We use the first two books in Joy Hakim's History of the U.S. series through California Virtual Academy (a division of K12). They condensed her 10 books into 4. We love these books. They present the info in small enough, interesting, digestible chunks. It is written in a great way. The first chapter was actually very entertaining! My daughter's favorite so far are the many chapters on the 13 colonies. Great sidebars, great illustration and easy to read. She is in 5th grade. I'm assuming the other two books are 6th grade...

Non Christian Worldview

by Tristan
(Ohio)

Levels Used: 1st
Dates Used: 2006

Likes: This series covers a huge section of American History.

It has a lot of pictures and visuals, which helps a student understand a time they've never been to.

It is available at the library!

Dislikes: The book is not written from a Christian Perspective, so I could not allow my children to take it to bed and browse. After using a few from my library we decided to find a different option.