Amazon Customer Reviews

I use this book for my kids as a preschool guide and it's a fabulous place to start. This book is great for ages three to five and perhaps a bit beyond. If you have a vast library at home the first section will be a lot of review. The book is specific enough to spark young mind's interest in a subject but general enough to leave room for self/parent-guided research. The English and math portions are more of what I'd think of as early pre-school level but the history, geography and social sciences areas seem to be spot on for PK and K. I loan it out to friends all the time and highly recommend it for homeschoolers and group schoolers alike.

Dr. Hirsch has grabbed the essence of knowledge and put it in a "Walmart bag of practical use for us. I am a degreed person and find this book to be the most practical approach to preparing students for learning in a line by line, precept upon precept formula of education.
I'm helping to educate my grandchildren. It doesn't get any better than that.

Dr. Hirsch has presented the basics of education that would link student to student if we were to use this in the public education venue. Great book that will never lose its practical applications and core selections.

Thank you Dr. Hirsch!!!!
I've had to present some pitiful "educational" materials over the last 30 years. Yours is a window of fresh air in practicality.

My 4 and 5 year olds love this book. They don't even realize that we're doing school work when we read and discuss sections in this book.

The book arrived on time and in the shape promised! Thanks so much will order again from you!

I read to my child every night. I have done this since he was days old. We have a boatload of books. He is almost 4 and I noticed he pays more attention when I read books with stories. I am sick of "Are you my mother?" and anything to do with Horton.

I was attracted to this book because it was filled with interesting, well known stories. I thought the lack of color pictures would be a problem, but it turned out to be irrelevant. He loves listening to the stories. He even tries to repeat them back to me.

Unlike other's, I like that these are the classic versions of the stories. These original versions don't always have the moral point infused into modern versions. They also can talk about death. However, this gives me the opportunity to have intelligent conversations with my child regarding tough topics.

Let me give you an example with the 3 little pigs. In the classic version, the brick pig only uses bricks because that is what he finds, which is the same with stick and straw pig. The moral of him working harder to get a better house is not in this version. In this version, stick and straw pig get eaten by the wolf. The wolf gets boiled in a pot of water.

So after we read the story as-is, we had a discussion about it. My 3yo really enjoyed the interaction.

At this point, we are doing 1 story, 1 fable or poem, and 1 math, science or spelling thing out of the book each day. I have been very happy with the results.