As a member of the Homeschool Review Crew I’ve been asked to tell you about Homeschool Library Builder.
Fill Your Bookshelves without Emptying Your Wallet.
This is the motto of an online bookstore run by two homeschool moms. Julie and Gayla wish to help you find excellent literature to stock your library, educate your children, and ‘create memorable reading experiences for your family.’ They offer a wealth of new and used books, many at 50% or more off retail prices. The offerings include everything from Curious George and Dr Seuss’s early readers to A Call to Arms, Amos Fortune Free Man, and The Little Princess. Other titles include classics like Beowulf and Hiawatha and less famous titles such as Quacky Quack-Quack. There are also Christian fiction, teacher helps, science books, and more. The lists keep changing. In fact, the newest arrivals list, containing books added in the last two weeks, is enormous.
The online catalogue is not just a list of titles either. Each entry includes a helpful –and enticing—description of the book.
The Homeschool Library Builder is geared to teaching through literature, as some great curricula are. A neat feature of the website is that you can search by various curricula, including Ambleside Online, Beautiful Feet, Sonlight, Five in a Row, and more.
While exploring the site, I found a few interesting books that I had never heard of. I’m requesting them from our library, but if I lived in the US I’d consider buying them from Homeschool Library Builder.
More Than Just Books
Homeschool Library Builder’s Helping Hand program includes a list of books whose proceeds go to Compassion International. This program also supports other worthy causes such as Operation Christmas Child and relief for natural disasters. Currently, support is directed to Haiti. In fact, you can
help Haiti for a Homeschool Library Builder discount, this weekend only
by donating to Heartline Ministries before this Saturday at midnight. If you contact Homeschool Library Builder, you will receive a coupon code for 15% off, valid on the 7th only. See the website for more information.
To help homeschooling families, there’s a carefully selected seasonal list of interesting links. The current list includes six links to sites about famous people born in February.
Homeschool Library Builder also seeks to support the homeschooling community’s entrepreneurs. Homeschoolers wishing to promote their products can advertise them in the free Market Place on the website.
A free membership is available to accumulate points toward future purchases, both from your own purchases and by referring friends to the site. Free newsletters are also available with information about current specials. In February the special is 20% off. This is added to this weekend’s discount for donating to Haiti (i.e. 35% off this weekend).
Shipping prices to Canada vary from about a third to a half the cost of the books. Usually I can get the books I need in Canada … and I don’t need to worry about customs either. For US homeschoolers, however, this seems like a wonderful site, well worth bookmarking and exploring. I’m bookmarking it as well, just to browse through its interesting list of titles occasionally.
For more opinions about Homeschool Library Builder, please see the Homeschool Review Crew blog.
Policies
Disclosure Policy: As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I did not receive anything from the Homeschool Library Builder in order to write this review of their website. (Except inspiration from their annotated book lists. Grin!)
Dial-Up Friendly Policy: For the sake of my dial-up readers, this blog avoids visuals.