We have used Sonlight for our history curriculum since we started home education in 2005. Our children loved to read and the Sonlight program offered fantastic historical selections. Over the years we realized that, while Sonlight offered fantastic history books, some we enjoyed more than others. At the end of most books, Jill asked the girls to rate it. For reasons still unclear, probably Jill's Type A personality, she tracked these ratings on a spreadsheet. Ultimately this was quite useful when friends asked for book recommendations for their publicly schooled children. Because our local public schools required students to read books within their lexile, Jill eventually added the lexile rating for each book. There are five Sonlight Cores (3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) that we read and rated; however by Core 7, Jill was not as diligent about recording the girls' ratings.
Below is a downloadable .PDF for each Sonlight Core list of books with our ratings. Over the years, Sonlight has changed the selections within each Core; the below lists are for the Sonlight Core that we used.
Our oldest daughter started attending school full-time her freshman year of high school. Students throughout the school raved about Mr. Kay, the AP World History teacher. When she was choosing her 10th grade classes, she wanted to take his class. She LOVED it.
Speaking from personal experience, Mr. Kay is an amazing history teacher and story teller. Not only has Mr. Kay has written the series "Young Heroes of History", but the accompanying lesson plans are available for free download.