Home Grown

In this fine and eloquent and moving book, Ben Hewitt takes a principled stand for the unconventional childhood, for the intellectual and emotional and soulful nurture of nature. --Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle Ben Hewitt walks you along the lanes of his small family farm right into the heart of parenting. He does not judge the new normal of life's fever-pitch pace but fills you with the courage to follow your hopes, which may well transform your family. --Kim John Payne, MEd, author of Simplicity Parenting, Beyond Winning, and The Soul of Discipline This fine book may make you wish you'd grown up in a very different way. --Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home What kind of parent doesn't send his kids to school? The kind that thinks maybe kids learn best when 'learning cannot be helped'--when kids are so excited about the world that they master the skills they need to explore it, the same way they mastered crawling, walking and speaking. --Lenore Skenazy, author of the book and blog, Free-Range Kids Hewitt provides a beautifully written handbook for those of you considering unschooling. And if you're already unschooling, buy ten copies to hand out to friends and family who ask you how it works. --Penelope Trunk, blogger, entrepreneur, and home-schooling advocate This is a beautifully written, honest, introspective, soul-revealing, and soul-stirring account of one family's choice to live close to nature and to allow their children to learn naturally, without school, in a self-directed manner. The book's biggest message, I think, is that we do have choices; we can chart our own lives, we don't have to follow the crowd if we don't want to. --Peter Gray, Research Professor at Boston College and author of Free to Learn This book fills me with both sadness and joy. My sadness is for the millions of children locked in schools, looking out the windows as the pre