Ancient History Reading List

As we aim for a literature-rich program that enlivens the history and cultures we're studying, "The Reading List" is the most time consuming and intense item in our preparation for the school year. I draw from Sonlight Curriculum, The Well Trained Mind lists, public school recommendations, and various websites that may have suggestions for certain periods or cultures. Of course this number of books gets very expensive -- the library hasn't worked well for us because these books become like old friends my children want to return to time and again. They fight over who gets to take which books when they move away! I highly recommend half.com, the used bookstore to the world -- I get beat up discarded library copies that have super tough bindings!
This year our history takes us from Ancient times through the Reformation. The following reading list is our complete literature for the Ancient World -- some are read aloud by me, some are read by the third grader, some by the sixth grader and some by both.
As a basis, the sixth grader has worked through the public school text book for sixth grade history, Ancient Civilizations, published by Pearson/Prentice Hall. There are extensive writing assignments throughout. The third grader has read through A Child's History of the World (Hillyer). We have listened to Margaret Wise Bauer's The Story of the World (volume I, Ancient Times) on CD all together, so the kindergartner who isn't yet a fluent reader got her first taste of the ancient world as well.

General

Usborne Time Traveler
Historical Atlas of the Ancient World (Hays)
The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Hurdman)
Learning About Ancient Civilizations Through Art (Chertok)
Ancient Civilizations (Hart)
A Child's History of the World (Hillyer)
The Story of the World (Bauer)

Prehistoric Times

Boy of the Painted Cave (Denzel)

Ancient Egypt

Hieroglyphs from A to Z (Der Manuelian)
History Detectives -- Ancient Egypt
Kids' Discover Magazine -- Mummies
Tut's Mummy -- Lost and Found (Donnelly/Watling)
Mara, Daughter of the Nile (McGraw)

Ancient Middle East

Kids' Discover Magazine -- Ancient Persia
Hittite Warrior (Williamson)
The Golden Goblet (McGraw)
The Bronze Bow (Speare)
Beyond the Desert Gate (Ray)

Ancient Far East (This isn't much -- we studied non-Western cultures last year)

The Great Wall of China (Fisher)
The Samurai's Tale (Haugaard)
I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade (Wilson)
A Single Shard (Park)

Ancient Greece

The Greek News (Powell, Steel)
D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
Usborne Greek Myths
The Iliad and The Odyssey (Homer)
The Trojan War (Coolidge)
The Aesop for Children (Ill. Winter)
Pandora of Athens (Denenberg)
Theras and His Town (Snedeker)
Archimedes and the Door of Science (Bendick)

Ancient Rome

Detectives in Togas (Winterfeld)
Mystery of the Roman Ransom (Winterfeld)
The Ides of April (Ray)
The Lantern Bearers (Sutcliff)
The Eagle of the Ninth (Sutcliff)

Byzantine Empire

Anna of Byzantium (Barrett)

Coming up... Dark Ages through the Reformation!