Since 1984 Beautiful Feet Books has been supplying quality literature to the home education and private school markets. Beautiful Feet Books is committed to integrating the best works of children's literature into every aspect of the educational curriculum by publishing noted authors and by providing study guides that enable parents and teachers to incorporate those works easily into a comprehensive curriculum.

Begun as a cottage industry over twenty years ago, Beautiful Feet Books is owned and operated by Russell and Rea Berg with the able assistance of their four grown children, Rebecca Manor, Hilary Severson, Solomon and Joshua—who attend conventions, manage the front office, and work in packing and shipping. Their involvement varies over the years as they move away to college, study abroad, or get married and move to distant cities or countries. As CEO, Russell administers all aspects of the business and has overseen the growth of the company from a small cottage based industry to a nationally regarded provider of home education products. In this role he has worked actively in product development, marketing, shipping, and distribution in both wholesale and retail markets. His role has allowed him to work with the home schooling community for over two decades in addition to speaking at many state home school conventions on various topics related to education. Rebecca has written a number of study guides and is currently researching a new guide on Westward Expansion. Hilary is the author of the popular guide, A Literature Approach to Equine History. Our youngest daughters, Tatiana and Katie, work in product assembly, putting together timelines and map sets. Beautiful Feet Books now provides books and educational products to educators all over the globe and many of our products have received national attention and recognition such as: Mary Pride's Practical Homeschooling Reader Awards for categories in History, Geography, and Literature, Cathy Duffy's Top 100 Picks, and The Old School House magazine curriculum awards.

Co-founder Rea Berg was initially inspired by the work of Susan Schaeffer Macaulay in For the Children's Sake, to pursue a "living books" approach to education when she began home schooling her own children in the mid 1980's. Macaulay's work was the inspiration for Rea's guides that combine a biblical worldview with a solid literature approach. Rea has a B.A. in English from Simmons College; in 2006, she earned a Masters Degree in Children’s Literature at the Center for the Study of Children's Literature in Boston where she was named a Virginia Haviland Scholar. This specialization and the writings of Charlotte Mason confirmed that creating a love of learning within an academically stimulating and challenging environment could best be achieved by under girding the curriculum with a rich selection of well-chosen classic and historical literature for children. The History Through Literature Study Guides published by Beautiful Feet Books reflect this commitment. Over the years these have grown to include such diverse areas of historical study as: Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance, Early American, California, as well as a History of Music, a History of Science, and many others.

In pursuing fine quality literature for children, the Bergs discovered along the way that some of the best historical works of this century were originally published in a sort of golden age of children's historical literature beginning in the 1930s and extending into the 1960s. During this time, such notable authors as Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire, James Daugherty, Olivia Coolidge, Genevieve Foster, Esther Forbes, Elizabeth George Speare, Holling Clancy Holling, Alice Dalgliesh, Marguerite De Angeli and many others wrote award-winning books--books noted for their literary quality and in many cases, their artistic beauty as well. But discovering these treasures often became a lesson is frustration, since in many cases, these wonderful works had been allowed to drop from publisher's backlists, and were no longer in print.

Thus, in 1994, Beautiful Feet Books entered the world of children's book publishing with our first-born book child, Leif the Lucky—a reprint of Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire's classic work of 1944. This book, originally illustrated by the labor-intensive method of stone lithography, had been out of print for 50 years. The only copies available were those printed from the original stone lithographs and it was from one of these that Leif the Lucky was reborn for a modern audience. The publication of many other fine works of historical literature followed and today Beautiful Feet Books publishes over twenty-five award-winning books for children.

The liberal use of literature within the curriculum necessitated the development of certain helpful products to enrich and support this approach to education. That is how our historical timelines came to play an important role in reinforcing the chronological flow of history. While reading great literature, students cutout, color, and paste-on depictions of seminal events in different periods of history, thus reinforcing a hands-on approach and a clear grasp of the unfolding of events. Currently, Beautiful Feet Books publishes Timelines for: Ancient History, Early American History, Medieval History, a History of Science, a History of Music and a History of California.

One of our most popular products designed to enhance the use of classic literature was the map set which accompanies the Holling Clancy Holling books: Paddle-to-the-Sea, Tree-in-the-Trail, Seabird and Minn of the Mississippi. Holling Clancey Holling was another children's author to come out of the golden era of historical fiction for children, and the above works created a new genre which children's book authority Anita Silvey calls "geo-history of a hybrid sort not seen before." Holling combined rich depictions of the geo-physical, natural, and scientific world with an engaging story—always featuring a child protagonist--to introduce children to the wonders of the world around them. Each book depicts a different geographic region lavishly illustrated with charming drawings that will hold a reader's interest for hours. Beautiful Feet Books designed four unique oversized maps to accompany the individual books and to provide students with a hands-on application of the wonders they are learning as they enjoy the story.

Currently located in San Luis Obispo, California, Beautiful Feet Books is continually endeavoring to provide quality products for educators committed to the liberal use of literature in the curriculum. In this pursuit, we are always on the lookout for works that enhance and enrich the student experience, recognizing that literature is art, and as such demands that it meet what Matthew Arnold described as the "best that is thought and known in the world."