"An observant child should be put in the way of things worth observing." - Charlotte Mason
The STORY
There we were poor and in post-graduate school. Let's just say that things were tight. We had seven kids at the time and were home schooling. I'm working and going to school. Sarah is homeschooling and teaching music lessons. We lived in the city. My goodness - huge rats, like sabretooth tiger...rats. One day I come home from work, and my wife tells me that she wanted to buy a bunch of books (can I get a witness?). She went on to explain that this set of books contained works of all the great thinkers of the West from Plato to William James, 50 plus volumes. I responded with something like, "MmHmm, ok...so where are we going to get the money?" Then in a superb sales pitch that was simultaneously part salesman and part Stoic philosopher, Sarah went on to explain a week-long project where we eat rice and beans thus cutting the $100 weekly grocery budget to $50 that week thereby freeing up the $50 needed to purchase the set from someone on Craig's List. The plan seemed sound, but I was still unconvinced until we got the books home. The sheer breadth of material covered blew me away - 100 great ideas covering the whole of western thought written by 60 plus authors and all in my living room for less than $1 a book. It was time to celebrate...with rice and beans!
Not long afterward I was accepted as Associate Professor at Trinity College in Jacksonville, FL. Having read the Great Books, using them in my research papers and doctoral dissertation, it was only natural that I recommend their use to my students. To my surprise most did not take up that advice. We had what looked like a brand-new set in the library. Why weren't the students tapping into this resource? Then it dawned on me. To approach the Great Books cold, not having read the material before, or being exposed to the ideas contained therein is a daunting even paralyzing task. It's too much. Where does one start? How do you know you are reading the right parts? And if you are reading "the right parts", do you understand those parts? Things were ok with my homeschool students. I had some familiarity with most of the authors and their works. But getting a Ph.D. isn't a very practical solution for navigating the Great Books. Enter Hannibal's Elephant.
Hannibal's Elephant provides grade-specific curriculum on the topics of the Great Books in an approachable format, offering references to the original material, age-appropriate summaries of that material, quizzes, synthesis questions, and essay prompts. In short, Hannibal's Elephant provides a compass to navigate the landscape of the Great Books, helping the student to understand where to start and identify salient thoughts of the original authors - turning analysis paralysis into soul-forming opportunity.
The People
Peter is a father of nine children with Sarah, his wife of 24 years. Three children have graduated. Six remain in the Agoge. Peter graduated from Clearwater Christian College with a B.A. in Biblical Studies with a Minor in Ancient Greek. He then went on to graduate from Westminster Theological Seminary (East) with an M.A.R. in Theological Studies. After that he attended Calvin Theological Seminary to study Philosophical Theology under John Cooper. Peter's final paper focused on Thomas Aquinas' view of theology as the most certain science. Finally, and sometime after, he graduated from Liberty University with a Ph.D. in Christian Theology and Apologetics. His dissertation focused on a Christian's warranted and rational properly basic belief in what the Bible says about itself. Peter was a professor at Trinity College in Jacksonville for six years. He has numerous published works in both scholarly journals and book format. For almost a decade now he has engaged university students of all walks of life and faith traditions with the truth of Christ's gospel by setting up a sign on campus and inviting passersby to discuss the deeper realities of this mortal coil. Peter and his family currently live in the mountains of western Virginia with their 70 chickens, 9 pigs, 4 sheep, 6 goats, 20 ducks, 2 German Shepherds, 3 hives of bees, and 1 cat.
The Difference
Students are not bodies that have souls. Rather, the reverse is the case. Students are souls that have bodies. Education is at its foundation the formation of souls. Whether young or old, all souls are students and are formed by the ideas and experiences they encounter. As such, education is not fundamentally a process whereby a student acquires the right skills to get a job. Education is not primarily concerned with what the student will do, but with what the student will be. And how does one go about directing what the student will be? The ancient Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, once concluded that "the soul becomes dyed with the color of his thoughts." Ralph Waldo Emerson once opined, "You are what you think all day long." Long before both of these, the ancient Jewish king, Solomon, wrote, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
In sum, it is our ideas that shape our souls. Because of the soul-shaping capacity of ideas, all ideas have some degree of power - power to help, power to hurt, power to illuminate, power to manipulate, power to free, and power to enslave. The great martial tactician, Sun Tzu, once wrote, "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." The Great Books offer the opportunity to know both Capitalism and Communism, Democracy and Tyranny, Liberty and Slavery, Good and Evil, and so much more. It is of the utmost importance that our students know themselves and know the ideas that free and enslave. It is this author's opinion that there is no better place than in the safety of home-schooling environment under teachers that love the student's soul to engage these ideas. Here the student can learn how to wrestle with powerful and difficult ideas under the loving and watchful guidance of the parent-teacher. The result being a well-formed student possessing confidence and boldness in his/her worldview ready to engage others of contrary opinion.
Hannibal's Elephant provides a way to effectively navigate these great ideas through affordable age-appropriate Great Books curriculum and assessment for the whole family.
The Reviews
Nothing yet, but if you build it, they will come.
The Curriculum
In the past I used to create summaries of passages from the great books and use those as handouts for my homeschool and college classes. But with the recent advances in technology, I have been able to automate and improve much of that process.
We have engineered a program to mimic the process I used to do on my own, manually searching for a relevant passage, and then typing out a summary and questions for my students. The process Hannibal's Elephant uses is faster, more efficient, and capable of better meeting students where they are in their academic journey. The process to create your student's custom curriculum is as follows:
The parent fills out our Custom Curriculum form.
As of January 2026, the parent can customize their student's curriculum in the following ways:
The parent/teacher may choose from any one of the available topics.
The parent/teacher then chooses a subtopic.
Below that is a list of authors and works pertaining to the chosen topic and subtopic.
The parent then chooses a grade ranging from Kindergarten to College.
Next the parent chooses a language (e.g., English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Korean, or Arabic).
Next choose from a variety of available cover images.
Then choose the color you would like the cover to be in. The point of #4-#5 being that an interesting cover can help to inspire the student to want to study this topic.
Choose the length of the curriculum in weeks using the number slider. You can choose anywhere between 1 and 36 weeks.
If you would like a distinctively Christian application of the portion chosen you may choose from several options.
There is a text box where you can enter other requests e.g., My student likes monster trucks or my student loves soccer or ballet. While we make no promises to include these elements in the curriculum, we will certainly make the attempt.
Finally, enter your email, the one to which you would like the curriculum delivered.
We then take the completed form from our email inbox and begin the process of running your request through our proprietary curriculum generator.
After reviewing the material for quality, we then email your new custom age-appropriate curriculum to the email provided in the form.