Is it really necessary to have a guide accompanying your child’s literature? Can’t they benefit from simply reading the book? Simply reading books is beneficial, yes, but only if you know how to read them. The more you can read between the lines, think critically, and retain information, the more you gain from reading. Until you know how to do this, reading is fairly pointless. These guides are dedicated to teaching your child to effectively comprehend and benefit from books, as well as increase their love of reading. With factual and analytical questions to help your child asses the book and activities to help your child enjoy the experience and enforce what they’ve learned, Veritas’ Comprehension Guides are an excellent foundation in intelligent reading that will set the stage well for later studies.

How Do These Work?

These Comprehension Guides are intended for children ages 5-13. Though they range in difficulty level from Milly-Molly-Mandy to The Lord of the Rings, the format for all the guides is the same. A list of questions for each chapter of the book focuses on helping your child remember facts and analyze the story. In addition to comprehension questions, there are several activities for each chapter, from recipes to research activities to art projects.For example, you'll cook Turkish Delight and make a model of the Dawn Treader when you read the Narnia books, and you'll decipher elvish runes when studying The Hobbit. With answers to the comprehension questions in the back of the book, it is feasible that older children can go through this guide on their own. However, especially for the younger children, parental guidance is suggested for checking answers and helping with the activities.

Our Honest Opinion:

From making a Little House on the Prairie breakfast to analyzing reality TV according to Fahrenheit 451, the activities and questions in these guides are ideal for helping kids understand and enjoy what they’ve read. Though this makes an excellent companion for younger children’s reading, we don’t recommend that it be used as a literature course for the older grades. The projects and factual questions are perfect for younger kids, making it easy for them to remember what they’ve read and learned. Veritas Press tends to be aggressive academically, so while we list their grade level recommendations in the list below, we think it’s quite alright if you use them in slightly later grades.  But if you’re looking for a literature course for an older child, you might want something with a little more depth. For a literature program for older students, Veritas Press’ Omnibus is the next step up from these Comprehension guides.