Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!
(quote of Abraham Lincoln upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe-1863)


Alex started an online history class Friday that uses 3 of Joy Hakim's books. We are starting our study with the Civil War and Hakim's 7th book, War, Terrible War (1855-1865). We are truly enjoying this wonderfully written book.

Chapter 3 in the book is about Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. We have been fascinated with this story and Alex really wants to read the book. I have never read it, but plan on getting a copy from the library and we'll see if we are really up to reading it or not. I would at least like to read it myself and perhaps share pieces of it with Alex.


We read A Picture Book of Harriet Beecher Stowe by David A. Adler. We always enjoy his books and this is a great picture book that gives you a quick overview of Harriet's life.


Tonight, I enjoyed watching this video by storytelling actress Paddy Lynn. She is dressed up as Harriet Beecher Stowe and you see clips of her first-person performance. I really enjoyed her show and would love to see it in person. I'll show this clip to Alex in the morning.


And, I found this video about Uncle Tom's Cabin while searching the internet. It is actually the one we watched with our class and I noticed that a lot of the photos are photos that are in Joy Hakim's book.

This class is going to be a lot of work for both of us, but we are already learning a lot!

6 comments:

live4evermom said...

You guys are always doing some fun stuff.

Donna said...

We LOVE Joy Hakim's books! She does a great job of telling just the right amount of information about each topic, and she has such great photos too!
Your online history class sounds like it is going to be GREAT!
Donna
http://homeschoolingsunnyflorida.blogspot.com/

Sybille said...

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a very important story and an example how the art of writing and telling stories is having inputs on changine politics...
We fortunately we found the audiobook in the library. We found out that Mark Twain (Tom Saywer stories) lived near to Mrs Beecher-Stowe and was inspired by her.
Thank you for sharing video!

dstb said...

Thank you for sharing these links about Harriet Beecher Stowe. I like to use the Hakim books, as well. Another place I have found for some information is Hippocampus.org. They have a whole section on American History. Click on their History mini-site and go to "The Only Recourse: War" and then to "Decade of Crisis". Uncle Tom's cabin is one of the lessons there.

When we get to this area of study next year, I will have to make a point of visiting the Harriet Beecher Stowe house in Hartford (and the Twain house, too).

Thanks so much for the resources!

Sarah

lahbluebonnet said...

Uncle Tom's Cabin is incredible, but really deep. I highly recommend it for high school. An abridged version (is that the correct term, I get them mixed up) might be best for now. It's not on the TOG reading list. I thought it was more important than the books that were recommended, so I skipped the others and we did our own thing with UTC for that TOG unit. I got the writing prompt idea fom a TOG friend at the IEW list! IEW is great! I never would have come up with a kitchen comparison either. I thought it was a fun twist.
Blessings,
Laurie

Robin said...

Awesome, Dana. We just finished with the Civil War, but you make me want to go back. There are always things you feel like you missed and this is one of them. But I guess that's why the public schools teach the same history subjects every year.

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