About
What Is Chapter House?
Chapter House is a literature-focused publishing imprint meant to serve the unmet needs of homeschool families and everyday parents who want more for their kids. We publish faithful editions of classic books for children, curate grade-by-grade curricula for homeschool families and classical schools, and write about the philosophy and history that makes the old books worth reading.
Our motto is Virtus et Miraculum, Virtue and Wonder. That is what we are after in everything we publish: Books that cultivate virtue through story, and stories that provoke the kind of wonder that turns a child into a lifelong reader.
What We Offer
Chapter House publishes four curated box sets, each containing three classic books and a companion pamphlet with teaching suggestions, literary essays, and educational philosophy.
Chapter I: Heroes and Wonders is for ages 5 through 8: The fables, the myths, and the legends that formed the bedrock of Western education for centuries. Titles included: Æsop's Fables. A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales for Children. Fifty Famous Stories Retold.
Chapter II: Warriors and Giants is for ages 7 through 10: Ancient history from Abraham to Rome, Norse mythology with E. Boyd Smith's original illustrations restored, and Stories of Beowulf in H. E. Marshall's retelling. Titles included: On the Shores of the Great Sea. In the Days of Giants. Stories of Beowulf.
Chapter III: The Triumph of the West is for ages 8 through 11: Homer's Iliad in Church's prose, a thousand years of Western history in Synge's narrative, and natural science through the stories of Jean-Henri Fabre. Titles included: The Story of the Iliad. The Discovery of New Worlds. The Storybook of Science.
Chapter IV: The Odyssey of Europe is for ages 9 through 12: The capstone of the series. Titles included: The Story of the Odyssey. Our Island Story. Tales from Shakespeare.
In addition to our own books, we curate grade-by-grade curriculum packages drawing on the best materials from select publishers for mathematics, handwriting, history, literature, nature study, science, music, art, and foreign language that all satisfy a complete educational experience. Each of these bundles come pre-packaged with our box sets, or you can select your own supplemental curriculum from our bookstore.
What We Believe
"What is education for?" is not a difficult question. It only seems difficult because we have spent the last century answering it badly.
Aristotle answered it plainly: The purpose of education is to form good human beings. This was the consensus of the Western world for more than two thousand years, and it shaped every institution of learning from the Athenian gymnasium to the medieval university. A child who learned the stories of Homer and Virgil, who could recite Æsop and reason from Aristotle, was not learning these things to earn a salary. He was learning them to become a person.
Somewhere in the last century, we lost the thread. Education became about measurable outcomes, career preparation, and economic productivity. These are not bad goals in themselves, but they are not the highest ones. A child who has learned only what he can trade for a living has not been educated. He has been prepared.
We believe the old consensus was right. We believe the Western Canon (its myths, its histories, its stories of courage and failure and grace) is a living inheritance that belongs to every child. We believe virtue is best taught through story, not through lectures or worksheets or morality exercises. The reason we still read about Horatius at the bridge is not because ancient Roman courage needs to be assigned. It is because a child who meets Horatius in a story carries something with him that no lecture can give.
We believe wonder is not a luxury. It is the beginning of wisdom. "Philosophy begins with wonder," Aristotle wrote in his Metaphysics, and he was right. A child who has never been moved by a story, never felt the pull of a hero's struggle, never laughed at a fable or wept at a parting, has been deprived of something essential. The great stories are the beginning of that formation, and they are worth fighting to preserve.
About Joshua and Hannah Centers
Joshua and Hannah Centers are the husband and wife editorial team behind The Chapter House books.
Hannah spent 13 years in the classroom teaching high school Spanish and history before turning to the education of their own children. Those years gave her something no curriculum guide can supply: A deep, practical understanding of what actually works with real students. She knows what causes a teenager to disengage and what causes a ten-year-old to beg for one more chapter. That instinct, earned across thousands of classroom hours, shapes every title we publish.
Josh brings the publishing side. With more than 13 years in editorial work, he could oversee the editorial process and the production logistics that turns an idea into a book you can hold in your hands.
Most importantly, the Centers are homeschoolers to their family of three children, and know on a deep level what it takes to give a child the gift of genuine literacy. When they began homeschooling, they went looking for the kinds of books they remembered from their own childhoods: Books that told true stories well, that did not condescend to young readers, that treated children as people capable of wonder and serious thought. They found some. They also found significant gaps. Too many of the books available for literary education were out of print, poorly produced, or written with the spirit of a standardized test, covering the classics on paper while draining them of life. The living books tradition deserved better. Chapter House grew out of that conviction.
The editorial vision for Chapter House was spawned from their home in rural Tennessee, in the same hills and woods where their children are growing up. It is a vision that is inseparable from their faith, from the books they choose to the way they understand childhood itself. Formation, in this sense, matters more than information. The right book, given at the right time, can inspire the course of a life.
This is a family project. We hope it serves your family well.
