"Ah, childhood . Boys. Long summer days, barefoot, fishing, swimming, laughter, pocket knives, dirty hands, dirty faces, sweaty brows, trouble, joy . The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an unmistakable celebration of youth and in particular boyhood. At the same time, it's an extended commentary on adulthood, grownups, society, and culture. And that commentary largely consists of a long, exaggerated eye-roll. Welcome to one of the great American stories. Welcome to the wit and the wonder of one of America's greatest writers." -Introduction to Toby J. Sumpter's Worldview Guide The Canon Classics Worldview Guides provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. The Worldview Guides focus on the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

"For 1500 years, Virgil's Aeneid reigned supreme.... \[O\]ur ancestors found in the Aeneid a purpose, a pathos, and a profundity that moved them. It was Virgil not in opposition to but alongside the Bible who taught Christian Europe the shape of history, the cost of empire, the primacy of duty, the transience of fame, the inevitability of death, the pain of letting go, and the burden of adapting new strategies." ~ From the Worldview Guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Plot Summary, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available online.

"The novel’s first words threaten to dissolve all “happy families” into a sea of uninteresting sameness, while unhappy families are unique, intriguing, even romantic. But if the opening line is a universal truth, it is also a challenge Tolstoy sets himself: to shine light on the damnable tragedy that gives unhappiness its luster, and commend the unsung glories of an ordinary life." - Sean Johnson The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"None of \[Nietzsche's\] writing is known particularly for its moderation, but Beyond Good and Evil is written as an assault on half-hearted philosophers who are still playing about with the old world. But he is a particularly infuriating read for those who see the world as made and ruled by God. He is difficult to understand since he seeks to remove everything that makes such a world comprehensible. But to say this is simply to describe our age, and for this reason Nietzsche is valuable. But be warned, he will not be trifled with. Sit with him and listen as he seeks to remove every vestige of God from the world." ~From Brown's worldview guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Structure and Audience, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

"Bulfinch’s work succeeds in introducing us to myths that not only help us understand allusions in later poetry, but which, seen through the lens of the Christian faith, can help us grow in Christian virtue. Ultimately, these myths help us appreciate the work of Christ even more, by showing us the darkness from which Christ delivers us." ~From Stephen Rippon's guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available online.

"Through Scrooge’s Christmas Eve journey, we encounter a classic story about sin and repentance, birth and new-birth, death and resurrection, all culminating in the eternal splendors of festival and feast. Since its publication in 1843, A Christmas Carol, to paraphrase the words of the author’s preface, has haunted countless houses pleasantly." - Steve Turley The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"Is it better to try your hardest and succeed or try your hardest and fail? Imagine two college one receives only 'As,' the other only 'Fs.' On the surface, it appears that good fortune is clearly more conducive to happiness than bad. But what happens when things go wrong? Which of these two students is more likely to respond better when his car is suddenly totaled? Who is more grateful for an unexpected gift? Who is more prepared to weather the ups and downs of a storm-filled life? Who would be more likely to receive the gospel? When we change the lens with which we observe these two figures, they start to appear in a different light. Fortune doesn’t last. We cannot count on good blessings all the time. Only by experiencing adversity are we trained in gratitude and thankfulness." ~Austin Hoffman's Guide to The Consolation of Philosophy The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, Further Discussion & Review, and instructions for how to take the Classics Quiz.

"Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic novel, Dracula, features many of the most powerful tropes in fictional narrative: suspense,love, seduction, heroism, sacrifice, and the burning desire for some form of immortality. Deeply contrasting settings—East and West, London and Transylvania, the sophisticated city and the wild mountains, aristocratic mansions and dank vaults, a happy home and a lunatic asylum—present a binary world that finds its ultimate formulation in the eternal conflict between good and evil." ~ Grant Horner The Canon Classics Worldview Guides provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. The Worldview Guides focus on the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and master the classics.

"No matter how strong one’s desire may be to escape the sins of the city, seeking the happiness and social harmony that lies out in the fields, any attempt to regain Eden apart from grace is doomed to fail. Man is wicked, regardless if he walks on grass or cobblestone. After all, the first sin of our first parents occurred far from any madding crowd, in the cool and quiet calm of a pastoral landscape, not a single city in sight." ~from Matthew Huff's guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Structure and Audience, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

"Graveyards are not normally a place for science experiments, but when you are Dr. Victor Frankenstein, they seem perfect....Mary Shelley (who was only eighteen when she began writing the novel) has been striking fear into audiences since that time with the legend of Frankenstein—a woeful tale of passion gone wrong." ~ Heather Lloyd The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"Hamlet holds a mirror up to our lives, for we too must act in a fallen world, even when the way is unclear and when our proof is dismissed by others. We too are called to kill serpents, to “lose all” for the kingdom. Because it takes great courage to confront the enemy head on and might cost us our reputation or our lives, we, like Hamlet, would rather think and play with words than act." - Grieser The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"All that man has thought or said about the glory and horror of the battlefield, the internal struggle of the soldier, and the inescapable nature of our mortality is contained within the pages of Homer's epic. It is here that western literature, here that the big questions begin to be asked, here that beauty meets truth." ~ from the Worldview Guide for Homer's Iliad The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Plot Summary, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available online.

"Many authors have taken their readers on fascinating journeys into the afterlife, venturing to heaven, hell, hades, or other spirit worlds. And while such stories are numerous, none of them approach the beauty and influence of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy—an epic poem that has stood the test of time, captured imaginations for centuries, and calls the reader to ponder life's (and death's) most important questions." -From Brian Phillips' guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

"Perhaps the most vivid testament to the power of Macbeth is that actors consider the play itself bad luck. And the themes seem to justify this reaction: Macbeth is an unhappy, bloody story in which ambition proves to be the harshest master and men’s lives little more than the playthings of witches." - Brian Kohl The Canon Classics Worldview Guides provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. The Worldview Guides focus on the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and master the classics.

"'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature. Intriguing, haunting, suggestive, ambiguous—the narrator does not say that his name is Ishmael. He summons the reader to call him by that name. And in so doing, the narrator invites the reader not merely into a story but an epic, a tale that encompasses life, death, the universe, God, angels, demons, and man caught in the eye of that cosmic hurricane. If you consent to call him Ishmael, you consent to this voyage." - Toby Sumpter The Canon Classics Worldview Guides provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. The Worldview Guides focus on the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and master the classics.

"In a day when most anything can be rendered disposable, Americans are not accustomed to keeping things that remind them of times of darkness, sadness, or failure. We do not keep the nameplate from the job where we were fired. We do not keep the bad report card or the paper that got an F.... Nationally, we do not build monuments to commemorate our nation's greatest failures. There is no Richard Nixon Memorial in Washington, nor is there a pillar to commemorate the Great Depression erected anywhere near Wall Street, though one can't help wondering if things might have played out differently in 2008 if there were. In America we forget the bad and try to remember the positive. We are the consummate optimists. This idea of a negative memorial, something we keep that serves as a warning to us of the dire consequences of falling into sin, is perhaps a useful starting place for considering Frederick Douglass' remarkable Narrative. If we are to understand both the good and the bad in America, there may be no better text to begin with than with this book." ~ from Jake Meador's guide The Canon Classics Worldview Guides provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. The Worldview Guides focus on the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

"If the Iliad is the first tragedy ever written, then the Odyssey is the first comedy. Whereas the first gives us man the warrior, seeking glory on the battlefield, the second gives us man the husband and father, seeking domestic bliss with his family. The first values strength and prowess; the second wit and perseverance. The first takes place in a world where the dividing line between good and evil is often hard to identify; the second in a world where virtue and vice are more defined." - Louis Markos The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"What makes this novel so remarkable? Historically, the novel is important as an exposé of the injustice and suffering in the Soviet gulag system. Solzhenitsyn's work, starting with Ivan Denisovich, is credited with helping to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.... But what accounts for the novel's historical impact, and what makes it worth reading today long after the fall of the Soviet Union? Ivan Denisovich succeeds on many levels. First, Solzhenitsyn tells a fascinating story of survival. Second, the novel is a great work of art in keeping with the classical ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty. Finally, Ivan Denisovich is a deeply Christian work that reflects a biblical theology of creation, fall, and redemption." ~ from Stephen Rippon's guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available.

"Origin of Species is a must read for Christians in our secularized, Darwin-saturated society. From a factual foundation, Charles Darwin persuasively extrapolates an erroneous explanation of life’s diversity and complexity apart from God’s handiwork, although there’s a lot Darwin argues that his modern-day proponents ignore....Christians, using Scripture and science, should study this profoundly influential book thoroughly and cautiously." - Gordon Wilson The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"Have you ever sat through a show, movie, or play that was intensely disturbing to watch? Othello is one such work... Why should we put ourselves through such an experience? Is there any redeeming value to be had in watching the inevitably tragic events unfold?" -From Stephen Rippon's Guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available.

It can surely be said that the poem is unique. For it is in many ways a book that teaches you the story of how you came to be reading the book. The subject of the poem is a tale of how the reader came to be fallen, and thus quite capable of utterly misreading Satan as a hero and God as a tyrant; and further, how mankind fell in Adam and is—mercifully—redeemed in the Second Adam. From Dr. Horner's worldview guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Plot Summary, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

"Before Lady Gaga, Madonna, Prince, David Bowie, Salvador Dali, or Liberace, there was Oscar Wilde, the archetype of the artist poseur....Oscar Wilde’s career established a cult of artistic spectacle and personal scandal inspiring provocateurs in every generation since." - Marcus Schwager The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"Everyone thinks they know what the Puritans were like, and a big part of the reason why they think they know this can be found in this book, The Scarlet Letter." ~From the Worldview Guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Plot Summary, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available online.

"In The Secret Garden, Burnett shows the ugliness of human behavior and then, as if to shake her fists at her critics, overcomes human depravity with the power of Spring. Although her depictions of rebirth deserve criticism, the story’s message is one that Christians should heed—beauty and goodness will always triumph over the harsh 'realism' of Winter." - Amanda Ryan The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics.

"Sherlock’s deductive prowess (whether imitated or not) is intriguing, but other aspects of Doyle’s handling encouraged Holmes’s great commercial success. One reason is that mankind derives endless fascination from the detective genre, perhaps because the present state of our existence centers on a kind of criminal event that occurred bygone ages ago in a garden called Eden. Since that fateful fruit selection, man’s life is inextricably bound up with sorting out the precise details and implications of this or that deception or crime." -From Marcus Schwager's guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Structure and Audience, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

"You'd never know Athens was locked in a life-or-death struggle from the tranquil and leisurely philosophical discussion that unfolds through the pages of the Republic...Plato's masterpiece continues to inform our questions and our thinking when it comes to being, truth, beauty, goodness, justice, community, the soul, and more." ~ from Dr. Littlejohn's Worldview Guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size Worldview Guides are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available online.

"Mark Twain once defined a classic as a book that everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read. By that cute definition, Treasure Island is not a classic at all. It is a book that is preeminently readable, and not only so, but it is readable by a demographic group not known for its prowess in the literary arts—viz. young boys. This is a book that is pitched almost perfectly to the imagination of a young boy, and on top of that it serves as a rollicking good story for everyone else." ~ From the Worldview Guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Plot Summary, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available online.

" Walden is a book that defies traditional classification. Thoreau moves nimbly between social commentary, political critique and vivid descriptions of the parenting behavior of wood-cocks. His assessment of his modern society is at once insightful and boorish. He identifies with piercing accuracy the enslavement of his fellow citizens to the complexities of modern life while neglecting the many gifts that are given to us in and through the City of Man." -From Brian Brown's Guide The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available here.

"Envision a region of damp, rocky, rolling hills attacked by winds, obscured by fogs, and covered by large patches of grass and 'a perfect misanthrope’s Heaven.' ... The soil supports very little life due to its high acid content, killing off most vegetation and rendering it largely barren; what trees may grow are often twisted and set at awkward angles by the violent winds. The setting perfectly supports the many dark, mysterious, deadly, and haunting aspects of this gothic novel." ~ from Marcus Schwager's guide The Canon Classics Worldview Guides provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. The Worldview Guides focus on the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach—and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key—to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. A free classics test and answer key are also available online.