These character building stories provide a refreshing change from most modern readers, offering a realistic view of life, instead of the imaginary, magical dribble so common these days. Children are well disciplined, show respect for God and parents, and do lots of chores. Animals are real farm animals, not animated talking creatures that wear clothes. Some stories are set in Amish farm life, others take place in the time of Jesus or in other historical settings. In the older grades, the books contain many faith promoting stories and touching poems. The poetry has been my daughter Julianna's favorite! She memorized several poems from the volume Seeking True Values. Inexpensive hardbound books are approximately 400 pages (except for thinner beginning readers) with simple black and white illustrations that do not depict human beings (an Amish practice). The Amish use no electricity so these books are printed on old fashioned printing presses. The inexpensive, large 90 page workbooks below go hand-in-hand with the Pathway Reader stories to teach English from the reading. Write-in workbooks cover phonics, spelling, comprehension, prefixes, suffixes, vocabulary, and other English skills. Teacher guides for younger grades give extensive guidance to help you teach reading using the workbooks and readers. Teacher's Editions are more expensive, but many of them cover two grades of workbooks. They are truly necessary unless you want to read and figure out every story. Ideas are given in the Teacher's Editions for extra activities to go along with each story too. Strictly black and white text, no illustrations in the workbooks. Note: The beginning readers are not pure phonetic readers. I did not use Pathway until my children had a firm phonetic start in reading. Some of the workbooks contain a few exercises in dictionary markings which I dislike. Older grades contain many Anabaptist martyr stories. Nevertheless, these books are treasures, especially the older grades.