Corrie ten Boom Unit Study from YWAM

*This post on Corrie Ten Boom: Angel in the Keepers Den was sponsored by YWAM Publishing in exchange for an honest review. This post may contain affiliate links.

I am always looking for good biographies to use for our history and geography studies. I was happy to find YWAM Publishing offers a wide variety of biographies through their Heroes of History and Christian Heroes: Then & Now series.  Since I have been accumulating books for our WWI and WWII study next year, I choose to review Corrie ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels’ Den.  My plan is to have my children read her biography and follow it up with her book The Hiding Place.

Christian Hero: Corrie Ten Boom

Because I wanted to gauge what age level this book would be appropriate for, in addition to having Raena (15) read it, I read it as well. 

The book does mention Corrie’s time being imprisoned in concentration camps and her experiences there.  Such as having to strip down to shower and be searched and having to sit in her own (and others) feces while traveling by boxcar.  It also mentions the deaths of family members. 

I felt that each of these was carefully and tactfully handled.  For example, while it did mention that the Gestapo hit her multiple times the night they arrested her and it makes mention of her injuries, it does not go into great detail to describe them.  The same is true with such matters in the rest of the book.  The facts are there, but the authors did not glorify the horrific. 

This was due in large part to the fact that the focus of this biography was not to dwell on the tragedies she experienced but to portray how her faith influenced her decisions both during and after the war.  In fact, one of the things I especially loved was how they incorporated and discussed the impact her faith had on her experiences and the importance it played.

I would feel comfortable having my eight-year-old son read this, provided we discussed it along the way.  If a child was reading it alone, depending on their sensitivity level, I would put this at fourth or fifth grade at the earliest age.  However, I felt it was a good book for my junior high and high school-aged children to read as well. 

Corrie Ten Boom Unit Study

Another feature of this book is the companion study guide.   I was expecting perhaps a ten or so paged study guide, with some questions or maybe material for a lapbook.  What I received was SO MUCH more.  It was actually a very thorough 75-page guide. 

There was a plethora of activities to choose from.   You could pick the one(s) that best suited your child(ren)s learning style.  I also found that they were adaptive to different age groups. 

I chose to have my daughter focus on the study questions for the chapters.  There were six questions for each chapter.  The first three questions were geared toward younger students.  They contained things like defining vocabulary words and questions with factual answers.  The last three questions were geared toward older students.  They sought comprehension or were open-ended questions seeking interpretation or an opinion.  My daughter did the last three questions for each chapter.

I was quite impressed by the thoroughness of the study guide and the number of different activities suggested.  I liked that there was a special section just for social studies.  It included places mentioned, vocabulary, and conceptual questions to help incorporate and better understand the geographical region where the story occurs.  The myriad options to choose from were really a favorite.

It was enough material to make for a great unit study on Corrie Ten Boom.