Homeschoolers in Literature: 2024 Trends

By Grace Nilsson

It’s 2025, and homeschooling continues to become a more popular and accepted educational choice than in the past. Is media representation keeping up with the times? Over the past year, I have compiled a list of new fiction featuring homeschooled characters. I will admit that I haven’t had the chance to read all of them yet, so I cannot give an in-depth review of every single book. There are probably also books I’ve missed. Still, I thought it would be fun to look at some general trends in the kinds of stories that are currently being published about homeschoolers.

The Characters

Of the eleven books I found ten have a homeschooled young person as the main character. The books tend to be from the perspective of the homeschooler themself, which seems like positive sign. As for diversity, it seems that literature is at least starting to reflect the variety of families that homeschool, although the characters are still primarily white (7 out of 11 books). Most are also American. Perhaps the strangest imbalance is a gender gap with a sole male lead character among the books.

The Role of Homeschooling in the Story

For some characters, homeschooling is a trap that they must escape. Kess, from The Secret of the Eelgrass Bog by Mary Averling, is literally trapped on her family’s property by a magical curse. Overbearing parents seem to be a common theme. Dust by Alison Stine is a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl forced to live on a remote Colorado farm with her controlling parents who barely educate her. The main character, Thea, finds freedom when she is able to interact with other people in her community. In Chronically Dolores by Maya Van Wagenen, ninth-grader Dolores befriends an autistic girl who is desperate to be allowed to attend public school. Gay the Pray Away is a YA romance novel by Natalie Naudus, who claims to have based it on her own upbringing. The title is a pun on a conservative Christian saying, so you might be able to guess that this is a story about a young woman breaking away from the confines of her cult-like homeschool community. The fact that the book is based on the author’s actual experiences is an important reminder that negative stories about homeschooling can exist in real life; so there is not anything inherently wrong with them being reflected in books. Finally, speaking of cults, The Wrong Way Home by Kate O’Shaughnessy is about Fern, a child raised in an isolated off-the-grid community. Thankfully, Fern’s mother at least cares about her enough to leave when there are signs of danger.

You may be wondering if I found any books that show homeschooling in a less negative light, and fortunately there are a few. Walkin’ the Dog by Chris Lynch and Just Shy of Ordinary by A.J. Sass both feature characters whose homeschool experience wasn’t bad. They are just ready to try something new for high school. Similarly, Coyote Sunrise from Coyote Lost and Found has some fond memories from the years she spent on the road with her dad. However, he eventually saw the need to settle down so that Coyote could have a more normal, stable life. Unsinkable Cayenne also tells the story of a girl whose nomadic family decides to make their home in a small Montana town. Of course, this includes attending the local school. Even when being a homeschooler is not shown as a miserable existence it still tends to be shown as an odd lifestyle that cannot last until a student’s graduation.

Finally, I found only one book published last year where the main character does not stop or even want to stop homeschooling. In Turning Twelve by Kathryn Ormsbee, Katie must deal with the many changes and confusing feelings that come with growing older. She struggles to feel accepted within her family’s church but does love her friends from co-op and theatre. Through all her struggles, she never once wishes to attend school. Turning Twelve represents something rare young people’s contemporary literature, a book where being homeschooled is treated how attending public school is treated in countless other stories- as just a part of the main character’s ordinary life.

Middle Grade vs. Young Adult

There were some interesting differences between the books written for a younger audience versus for an older one. Not only did I discover more middle grade books, but they also tend to be more positive. The majority show homeschooling as at very least not a terrible curse. On the other hand, only four of the eleven books on my list are young adult and they all show homeschooling mostly negatively. In these books being homeschooled ranges from boring and unhappy (Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Abike-Iyimide) to straight-up abusive (Gay the Pray Away). Middle grade authors seem more willing to tell stories about quirky, happy homeschoolers, while YA ones favor desperation and drama.

What is Missing?

Overall, I am not surprised by my findings. Although I have only discussed a short list of books published last year, the patterns seem similar to what I have noticed in the past. Most notable is a trend that I have already written an entire persuasive essay against. That is, the tendency for almost every homeschooled character to end up leaving (or wanting to leave) homeschooling behind. There is also a distinct lack of YA books that depict homeschooling in a positive or even neutral way. I have wondered if the increased popularity of homeschooling after the pandemic might start to be reflected in literature, but so far this does not seem to be happening. The average homeschooled character continues to be an isolated individual in unusual circumstances who would probably be better off in a “real” school. Every author I have mentioned today has come up with a unique and interesting story. However, I still think that a much wider variety of stories could be told about homeschoolers.