The Master and His Apprentices is a textbook course with a teacher guide. The program is suitable for Christian high schoolers and offers a full credit of Art History if used with the teacher guide. The book can also be purchased as a hardcover textbook, of course, this is a much more expensive option. This review is for the digital version of The Master and His Apprentices: Art History from a Christian Perspective.
I used this product with my upcoming Sophmore, who is taking college-level classes through dual enrollment, and my upcoming 8th grader. We went through the first few chapters of the book. The book seems to take awhile before getting into history. So I read ahead a little further to get a better feel for the coverage of history. (Chapter 1 is Introduction to Art, and chapter two covers creation, chapter 3 & 4 start covering history and art.)
For us this textbook is pretty heavy, coming in at over 300 pages, it is a truly detailed and thorough study. There were many points in reading where both I and my sons felt the author was repeating herself and being unnecessarily wordy. This makes it feel a bit chore-like to read through. I would say this is often the problem with textbooks, and if you are used to using textbooks the style may not bother you.
My boys both really had trouble focusing on the readings. The first chapters contained no new information for them and they were just bored. Reading ahead, I can see there is a lot of history covered, but the style does not become more engaging. Honestly, I feel if I force my kids to finish this book they will hate art and also possibly history by the end of it.
The digital version of this book is a bit awkward to read as a whole page does not fit neatly onto the computer screen, you have to scroll up and down as you read the page, since the text is split into two columns. This would be fine for the printed version but is an awkward format to read digitally.
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