Cover Story

Cover Story is a one-year middle-school creative writing curriculum, built around the conceit that students produce their own magazine across the year. It occupies a specific niche, a video-led, craft-focused writing program for students who want to be writers rather than students required to pass an essay exam.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Subject-specialist, video-led creative writing, project-based
Worldview	Christian-evangelical (light framing; craft-focused)
Grades	6-8 (middle school; the publisher lists grades 6-9)
Formats	Video course (streaming or DVD), hardbound student text, workbook
Cost tier	Premium
Parent intensity	2
Accredited	No
ESA-common	Yes (video curriculum typically eligible; some states restrict religious content)
Website	clearwaterpress.com/coverstory

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Strong on craft (voice, audience, revision); not focused on academic essay writing
Ease of teaching	5	Video-led; parent role is minimal beyond setup and accountability
Content quality	4	Schwabauer's instruction is clear and professional; production values are high
Flexibility	3	Designed as a one-year program; not easily shortened or extended
Value for money	3	Premium pricing, $200-$300 for the full kit
Worldview scope	4	Christian framing is light; craft content is largely secular and adaptable
Visual/design	5	Hardbound text and polished video production
Support resources	4	Active student community, publisher-run contests, and companion resources through the high school One Year Adventure Novel

Who the publisher is

Cover Story is published by Clear Water Press, whose site credits Daniel Schwabauer as the creator of the One Year Adventure Novel, Cover Story, and Byline writing curricula for homeschool students. The flagship offering is One Year Adventure Novel (OYAN), a novel-writing curriculum that the publisher lists for grades 9-12, in which students complete their own novel. Cover Story is the publisher's middle-school program for grades 6-9, aimed at students not yet ready to commit to a full novel-writing year but wanting structured creative-writing instruction.

Clear Water Press lists a post office box in Olathe, Kansas, in the Kansas City area. The publisher runs an annual free Student Novel Contest for OYAN students, a set of Cover Story student contests, and a student forum for OYAN students.

The editorial orientation is Christian but craft-focused. Occasional references to biblical themes or Christian writers (C.S. Lewis, Tolkien) appear in the video lessons. But the curriculum's instructional content is primarily about writing craft, voice, audience, revision, scene construction, dialogue, article structure, rather than doctrinal or worldview-integrated writing instruction.

The core pedagogy

Cover Story's organizing conceit is that students spend a year producing their own magazine. The magazine is not a hypothetical, it is an actual end-product that students design, write, illustrate, and assemble by the end of the year. Over the course of the curriculum's lesson sequence, students draft the magazine's articles, short stories, interviews, opinion pieces, poetry, and visual design, with Schwabauer's video instruction guiding each writing form in turn.

Scope and sequence runs across approximately thirty-six weeks, matching a standard school year. The early units focus on generating content (brainstorming, interviewing, observation exercises) and introducing core craft concepts (audience, voice, the difference between showing and telling). Middle units cover specific writing forms, feature articles, short fiction, interviews, reviews, with structured assignments for each. Later units focus on editing, revision, layout, and the design-and-assembly phase where students compile their work into the completed magazine. The final weeks are devoted to finishing and sharing the product.

Signature mechanics: (1) Video-led instruction. Each unit opens with a short video (typically fifteen to twenty minutes) of Schwabauer teaching the concept through direct-address lecture, examples from his own writing, and sample student work. In our assessment, the video instruction is professionally produced and clearly structured. (2) Magazine as integrative project. Rather than teaching writing as a collection of discrete skills assessed through essays, Cover Story frames the entire year around a single integrative project. Students write because the magazine needs articles, not because an assignment sheet requires output. (3) Voice and audience as primary concerns. Schwabauer's pedagogical emphasis is on teaching students to write as writers, addressing a real audience, developing a distinctive voice, caring about the reader's experience. (4) Revision built into the cycle. Students revise their work multiple times across the year; the magazine assembly phase requires them to return to pieces written months earlier and improve them.

The parent role

The parent role is genuinely light. Schwabauer's video takes the teaching role, and the student works largely independently on drafting. Parents function primarily as readers of the student's work (offering reactions rather than editorial corrections), as accountability for weekly deadlines, and as technical support for the magazine-assembly phase at year's end.

What they do exceptionally well

Treats writing as craft, not as essay production. The single strongest feature of Cover Story is its orientation toward writing as a craft pursued for readers rather than as academic output pursued for a grade. Students learn voice, audience, revision, and the writer's own distinctive perspective.

Production values. The hardbound student text, the video production quality, the workbook design. In our assessment, these materials are well made.

Integrative project structure. The magazine-at-the-end-of-the-year structure gives the entire curriculum a purpose that transcends week-by-week assignments. Students work across drafts, revisit earlier pieces, and see their writing improve across a cumulative year. The final assembled magazine is a genuine artifact.

What they do poorly

Not academic writing instruction. Cover Story teaches creative and journalistic writing well. It does not teach academic essay writing, the thesis-support-conclusion structure, the research paper, the literary analysis essay, the document-based question. Students relying on Cover Story as their sole writing program will need to pair it with or follow it with an academic writing program (IEW's upper-level materials, a classical composition program, a formal high-school rhetoric course) to prepare for college-level expository writing. Cover Story is a valuable year of craft instruction, not a substitute for academic composition.

Premium pricing. The Cover Story Cloud Set (one year of video streaming plus shipped materials) is $199 and the DVD Set is $229, per the publisher's Cloud streaming or DVDs page as of October 2026. For one year of middle-school writing instruction, this is at the premium end of the category. Families operating on constrained curriculum budgets may find the price-to-year-of-instruction ratio difficult to justify when lower-cost alternatives (a classical composition workbook at $50) are available. The answer depends on whether the family values video-led instruction and production polish highly enough to pay for them.

Single-year duration. Cover Story is designed as a one-year program. Families looking for a multi-year middle-school writing sequence will need to combine Cover Story with other programs.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Cover Story if: you have a middle-school student interested in creative writing or journalism; you want a video-led program requiring minimal parent teaching; you value production polish and find it increases student engagement; you are comfortable with light Christian framing; you can commit the premium price for one strong year of writing instruction.

• Skip Cover Story if: you need academic essay instruction (thesis, research paper, literary analysis); you are on a tight curriculum budget; you want a multi-year sequential writing program rather than a single-year project-based course; your student bristles at video-led teaching; you want a curriculum with no Christian framing at all.

Cost honest assessment

The Cover Story Cloud Set, which includes one year of video streaming plus the shipped Student Book, Teacher Guide, and journal, is $199, and the DVD Set is $229, per the publisher's Cloud streaming or DVDs page as of October 2026. The same page lists a $39 per year streaming renewal and a $79 replacement student kit (Student Book plus journal).

Compared to alternatives, Cover Story sits at the premium end of middle-school writing curricula. IEW's Structure and Style base program runs $200-$400 per year for family-license video-plus-materials packages. Bravewriter's Help for High School and Kidswrite Basic combined programs run $200-$500. Cottage Press Fable or early Bard Stage books run $60-$100 per year. Writing & Rhetoric from Classical Academic Press runs $60-$100 per book. Cover Story is not the cheapest option, and families should evaluate whether the video-led delivery and project structure justify the spend for their specific student.

An all-in family budget for one student using Cover Story as their primary writing curriculum for the year runs approximately $245-$295 in total materials, with no significant supplementary costs.

ESA eligibility notes

Video-based curriculum from OYAN is typically eligible under state ESA marketplaces that cover digital and video curriculum. Florida's Step Up For Students, Arkansas's LEARNS Act marketplace, and Arizona's ClassWallet all list video curriculum and streaming subscriptions as eligible categories. The publisher does not operate a dedicated ESA vendor-reimbursement workflow, so families purchase direct and submit receipts. Because Cover Story carries light Christian framing rather than substantial doctrinal content, it has historically not run into religious-content restrictions in state programs that apply them, though state rules shift annually.

Alternatives

• IEW Structure and Style, a family would choose IEW over Cover Story for a more structured, methodology-driven writing program applicable across academic and creative writing contexts.
• Bravewriter Kidswrite Basic or Partnership Writing, a family would choose Bravewriter over Cover Story for a process-oriented, writing-lifestyle approach emphasizing voice and daily writing practice.
• Writing & Rhetoric from Classical Academic Press, a family would choose CAP's Writing & Rhetoric over Cover Story for a classical progymnasmata-based progression at a substantially lower price point.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Clear Water Press site, the Cover Story program page, the Daniel Schwabauer instructor page, the Cover Story sample lessons, and the One Year Adventure Novel companion high-school program. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy's published review of Cover Story. Cover Story pricing verified October 2026.