Christina Eastwood's new book, Wulfgar the Saxon: Wulfgar and the Vikings has now been published. It is the first in a trilogy, the others yet to be published. Christina has also written 'The History of God's Dealings with our Nation' books 1 and 2, as well as making the Mothers' Companion curriculum available. We thought that we would ask Christina about herself and her books. Why did you decide to home educate?I have to say honestly that one reason is that I love playing with children! I could not bear the thought of handing mine over to someone else all day while I missed out on the fun. Certainly they have grown up quickly and I am very glad I didn't miss all those happy times. On a more serious note we both had concerns about what they would be taught in school – and this was in the 1990s! I think at first we just considered individual topics – creation, morals and so on. Later it began to dawn on us that it is not just that a materialist education (that's what state school provides) is wrong in some areas – it is foundationally flawed. It was only when we were actually in the throes of teaching that we realised the force of Colossians 2:3 “...in whom [Christ] are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge...” and that the Bible tells us three times that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom/knowledge” for a good reason! Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10. This sounds fanatical, perhaps. I do not mean that we sat the children down with no other text book than the Bible. I do not even mean that we used only textbooks by Christians produced deliberately with a Christian world-view. Unbelievers are often correct in what they teach and can sometimes make profound observations. However, when they do so it is because, unwittingly they are borrowing from a Christian world-view. A truly materialist world-view will never give you a consistent picture of reality and indeed lacks a reason or basis for the existence of logic and reason itself. Did you make any key discoveries along the way?Yes – and they were radical! If you have to teach your child biology you have to research and understand the Creation/Evolution debate – that is obvious. But this is not the only subject that has to be completely re-thought from the bottom up. History, for instance, constantly raises questions once one is evaluating the actions of rulers or nations against the standard of God's Word and we also found we were constantly sifting through what we read to find the Church. “Where were the Christians?” we kept asking. What were they doing? These are the things that interest us. History is the story of God's providence and of his church! How did the events of the day work out to the spiritual good of God's people? What were the ideas that drove people to act in the way they did and how did those ideas either depart from or draw on God's Word? Then there is geography. Wrong geological assumptions underlie the teaching of physical geography in ordinary textbooks and in learning more generally about other parts of the world we often needed to research what is going on in the way of missionary activity to gain a true picture of what a country is like. We found we had to constantly bear in mind that this is God's World not Our World. When approaching the topic of learning to read, Christians are inspired by the knowledge that God's word is a written word. Writing (and indeed language itself) is not something humans have just invented for their own convenience. To know for himself what God says in His Word a child must learn to read. This means that reading is of the utmost vital importance. All over the world, literacy comes in the wake of Christianity because it is the God-given vehicle for apprehending the very revelation of God Himself. As parents, we quickly came to the conclusion that everything we taught had a different perspective, a different emphasis. Even Maths – yes Maths! – looks different when you realise that maths itself is a fundamental evidence for the existence of a consistent Creator. All this made us consider things that previously had not entered our heads. If your child is in school you can ignore these issues. Your child is taught everything as though God does not exist – as though his immutable nature is not the very reason why one plus one always makes two. Personally, I found it deeply inspiring and mind expanding as well as humbling to realise that before I began home educating I had been just ambling along with a set of anti-Christian principles governing how I perceived some of the most basic aspects of life. I think my own education really began when I started teaching my own children. What books did you use?When we used “ordinary” textbooks we used them in a different way and with certain modifications right from the beginning. As a rough and ready rule the older the book the easier it is to make it conform to a Christian world-view. This is because older writers were unconsciously influenced by that world-view and modern writers often consciously ignore or fight against it. In older books the underlying Christian assumptions are often there – you just have to spell them out. We had the privilege, due to the era in which we were doing our home education, of being able to collect very cheaply from second hand bookshops and charity shops a large number of older educational books which were much closer to a Christian world-view in outlook than those of the present day. We imported American Christian text books too but found that generally older British books met our needs better – as well as more cheaply! Why did you decide to write your own children's history book?I didn't decide to write a history book, it happened accidentally! History teaching was a real problem. I was keen to do it properly as I had a gut feeling history was vitally important. There were good Christian books on historical topics for adults. There were old fashioned children's history books. There were Christian American children's history books. None of these could be used just as they were for history lessons with young children. I found myself constantly preparing my own notes based on these sources to produce history lessons for children grounded in a Christian world-view and suitable for British children in scope and emphasis. These notes were devoured enthusiastically by other Christian home educators and eventually were published in two volumes as The Story of God's Dealings with Our Nation by Ichthus Resources. What made you compile The Mothers' Companion flashdrive and how did you do it?The Mothers' Companion flashdrive of resources (available from https://motherscompanion.weebly.com) grew out of my keen enjoyment of many of the books we used that were not well known to others. Never one to waste things, I wanted to pass on what I'd discovered to other families so that they would not have to spend time trying to find them for themselves. Several times when I showed people what I'd been using, they suggested republishing the old books in some way. I thought it would be too hard. Publishers would not be interested and the market would be far too small. What about electronic formats? I thought copyright problems would be insurmountable. However, when I approached those publishers and authors who could be found, I was amazed at the combination of enthusiasm and apathy I encountered. Some authors were delighted that their work was still of use and happily gave permission. Other publishers could not be bothered to trawl through files etc. and simply said that they had no idea what agreements they had had with authors (if indeed they knew who the authors were) but I could use their materials so long as I was prepared to withdraw them should anyone object. I began to acquire a thick file of permission letters. Almost nothing I had used could not be reproduced except the Ladybird Key Words Reading Scheme, of course! I bought a digital scanner... Looking back on it, I cannot imagine how I ever did it. There were thousands of pages of text recognition all needing patient checking. Many of the best books were so old they did not scan well and the resulting “raw” scans were almost unintelligible. I ploughed on evening by evening, after the children had gone to bed, scanning the books they had used the previous year. Volunteer checkers were a great help. One dear lady from Northern Ireland was an insomniac who checked vast amounts of print in the wee small hours while the rest of us were sleeping! The results were initially published on CDs, but now the whole thing comes on an easy to use flashdrive, providing a complete curriculum up to age 12 which can be printed out as needed by the user. Some people use it just to dip into. Others have found it a great help when getting started in home education. Some use the “diaries” section for each year as a framework for their own activities and some plough through everything lock stock and barrel! Nowadays I also have a website https://latinigcse.weebly.com which uses Mothers' Companion materials to provide a complete free course in Latin for IGCSE within a Christian world-view. What prompted you to start writing books of your own?As a child I had always written stories. Being dyslexic, (I know this now – there was no such thing as dyslexia when I was a child and I was just treated as appallingly dense) these were very difficult for anyone else to read but that did not stop me. My young cousin received an adventure tale about a farm kitten every week, which her poor older brother had to struggle to read to her! Once I had children of my own I told them stories all the time and so did my husband. He had a cast of hilarious characters: Mr Rabbit, Bill Twister, Mr Bimpkins who rode bicycles, piloted canal boats and recklessly drove traction engines at high speed while getting involved in The Great Toothpaste Scandal and The Exploding Baked Bean Mystery! What with the Mothers' Companion and The Story of God's Dealings with Our Nation, and involvement with the Christian Education for Deeside Exam Centre (that's a whole story in itself) not to mention the actual education of our children, I had no time to write down fiction of my own anymore. I was always conscious of the gap there was in British junior fiction for really good quality novels with a Christian perspective and often had ideas of what I would write if I could. I was also aware that there was a certain type of home educated child, “the totally voracious reader” who needed a vast quantity of through-put and that good quality material was quite scarce. When I began to approach “retirement” (my youngest son is now just 20) it was like a dam bursting and all the ideas and plots I had mulled over were scrambling to get themselves down on paper. What do you like to write – and what do you aim to achieve through your books?I always loved adventure stories as a child, especially those with strong, appealing characters. I disliked intensely the kind of books I was sometimes given as a prize at Sunday School, where the “Christian” element seemed tacked onto a plot which would have worked quite well without it. I think fiction is a tremendous aid to historical understanding if it is well researched. The facts of history which can seem dull or irrelevant, come to life once an appealing character is walking through them. The lives of Christians in the past should be an inspiration to us, but I suspect that Christian biography often fails to inspire anything but terror in the young or inexperienced Christian reader. This is because God gave a supernatural courage to the historical saint or martyr when it was needed. In my personal childhood experience, I read what they went through and, on examining myself, I found such courage totally lacking. I had no idea that there was a good reason for this and it led to feelings of guilt and lack of assurance. In a work of fiction all sorts of historical situations can be presented without this difficulty, as the author has a free hand in how the situations and characters are developed and can tailor the plot to present the Christian message within the historical context. As a writer, I would love to be able to present characters in such a way as to gain the reader's confidence, as it were, so that they feel the power of the gospel message and long for that powerful forgiveness themselves. I'm still learning... What books have you written so far?Apart from the Story of God's Dealings with Our Nation, which is mentioned above, I self-published a full length historical novel for young adults, Trasna na Dtonnta, or A Tale of Three Cities, in 2017. This is a fictionalised biography of William Bedell (1571-1642) the man who was responsible for the first translation of the whole Bible into Irish. Since then, John Ritchie has published my Not Without Tears (2018), a biography of the Christian educational pioneer and protector of orphans, Favell Lee Mortimer. I wanted to write a fictional book based on Mrs Mortimer's life, but when I had finished it I was not satisfied with it. One of the problems was that Mrs Mortimer's life was too exciting and interesting as it was, without any fictional elements! I abandoned the novel and wrote a biography instead. Last year Ritchie's published the first short historical novel in my Wulfgar the Saxon series, Wulfgar and the Vikings. This is the most exciting of my literary endeavours to date, because for the first time I have had a fiction book accepted by a conventional Christian publisher. There are two more Wulfgar books in the pipe-line, subject to satisfactory sales of the first book – so please all rush out and buy it! Your local Christian bookshop can order it for you, if they do not stock it already, or you can get it direct from Ritchie's. The price is not excessive and the book is designed to be a quick read or read-aloud for the 8 to 13 age bracket. Christina's latest book, the next in the series, is now available: https://www.ritchiechristianmedia.co.uk/product/eastwood-wulfgar-saxon-wulfgar-and-vikings Do you have any advice to young writers?Read as much as you possibly can. The more good books you read, the more your style will improve. Get anyone and everyone you possibly can to read what you write. Beg them to criticise ruthlessly and listen to what they say without feeling hurt. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend...” Proverbs 27:6. You are writing to get a message across and if people do not enjoy what you write they will not get the message. Listening to criticism is an excellent way to find out what people do and don't enjoy. Submitting manuscripts to publisher after publisher without getting a response can be disheartening, but it does not necessarily mean you are not a good writer. You may have to do this for a very long time before you have any success. Independent publishing (so-called indie publishing or self publishing) can be a way forward, but demands a huge amount of work and can be expensive. In my experience you are better off spending your time writing and submitting to conventional publishers rather than trying to promote and sell your own work. Trawl the internet for small publishers. You may even find one who specialises in the kind of thing you write. Study the submission procedures outlined on publishers' websites and follow them carefully. Above all, don't give up.
1 Comment
Jamie O'Connor
8/1/2020 01:23:24 pm
An outstanding interview! Thank you for this have long admired Mrs Eastwood’s Books and am so glad to hear she is continuing her writing. The questions asked are so helpful and the answers provide much food for thought as well as practical help. Thank you home education resources!!!
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Welcome!After studying for an Early Years Specialism degree (B.Ed. Hons), and teaching in mainstream education, I home-educated my own children, after my husband and I were persuaded of the need to take responsibility for bringing up our children 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' (Ephesians 6:4) We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
This costs the purchaser nothing extra. In this way I can continue to provide free resources. Thank you for your support. Looking for a read-aloud?
Here's one I heartlily reccomend for ages 10 +. Search
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The First book from Christina Eastwood - the first in a triology - only £5.99 (ages 8 to 13).
Now available in PRINT!
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