It took me forever to understand what a spine was! (The term pops up on more than just Truthquest too) I think of a spine book as an “big picture” book. It is a tree trunk so to speak, covers all the major points or areas of a specific subject. A certain period in history, a persons lifetime, or a science topic. Right now we are using Apologia’s Swimming Creatures like a spine book. At the moment my son is on the shark/ray chapter… Swimming Creatures gives us an overview on sharks and we read a couple additional books that are more indepth or specfic, a book on just great white sharks for example. The additional books let us branch out from our spine book. I could accomplish the same result (ie. him learning about animals that swim) by reading several books about various swimming animals and no spine at all. The reason we are using the Swimming Creatures as a spine is that there are some chapters/topics I want just an overview and others I want to go more in depth. I don’t want to skip learning about mollusks but at the same time, we won’t spend the same amount of time learning about them they way we did with whales. Mollusks will just be the spine book and nothing addtional.
Probably a better anology about a spine book, particuluary for history, is to imagine it as a freeway and other more specific books as backroads. You still end up at the same end location, you just choose which road (or roads) to take in order to get there! Really either way is fine, there are living books that serve as spine books and living books that are more specific. I’ve found personally, that it really boils town to time for me. A spine can be faster. I have used spines by themselves, but most often with other books. If you look at the SCM history guidebooks, they will usually use one of the main family books as a spine, and each age group branches out farther from there with more specific books. The way they have it set up may help the whole idea make sense. I think that’s when I finally “got it!”
Truthquest is a in a way the “dust jacket” as you described it, but it is really more than that. It is like having a tour guide take you through a period of history. The strength of the program, I think, is in Michelle Miller’s commentary. Her purpose is to teach students (and parents) to view all of history not with a human-focus, but with a God-focus. Instead of to learn the story of mankind, to see God’s love for us, to find His truth within history, and to learn what people believed, how they repsonded and how that shaped history. What did people believe about God? And what did they believe about mankind? (She calls these the 2 Big Beliefs.) This is another way to view history, and certainly different from what I learned in public school. You might consider deciding if this approach is one you would like to take for history or not. Certainly history can be learned and discussed, and God’s truth can be found without using Truthquest History. (And it can be found using it too.)
