Cover Story

Cover Story is novelist Daniel Schwabauer's 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; some families extend to 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)
Established	Cover Story launched 2014; One Year Adventure Novel launched earlier
Website	oyan.com

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; a design standout in the market
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 One Year Adventure Novel (OYAN), the creative-writing curriculum company founded by novelist Daniel Schwabauer. Schwabauer is a published author of middle-grade and young-adult fiction, the Legends of Tira-Nor series among his best-known work, and taught writing workshops before developing a curriculum product. The flagship offering is One Year Adventure Novel (OYAN), a high-school novel-writing curriculum in which students produce a complete novel over a year of video lessons. Cover Story was developed in 2014 as a middle-school companion to OYAN, aimed at students not yet ready to commit to a full novel-writing year but wanting structured creative-writing instruction.

OYAN operates as a small curriculum publisher centered around Schwabauer's instructional voice. The company is based in the Kansas City area and is not affiliated with a larger publishing house. Its scale in the homeschool market is substantial among families seeking dedicated creative-writing curriculum. OYAN materials are consistently referenced in the classical, Christian, and writing-intensive homeschool communities, and the company's annual student writing contests and online student community (Student Writers Workshop) maintain a cohesive alumni base.

The editorial orientation is Christian but craft-focused. Schwabauer is a Christian writer, and 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. Families from non-Christian backgrounds who have used the program report that the Christian framing is light enough to be easily absorbed or sidestepped; the craft instruction carries regardless.

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. The video is genuinely good instruction, professionally produced, clearly structured, and in a teacher voice that middle-school students engage with. (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. This differs substantially from the academic-essay focus of many writing programs. (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.

A day in the life

A seventh-grader using Cover Story spends approximately forty to sixty minutes on the program three to four days per week. Monday opens a new unit: the student watches Schwabauer's video lesson (fifteen to twenty minutes), reads the corresponding chapter in the student text, and begins the week's assignment. Tuesday and Wednesday are working days, drafting, editing, or working on the assigned writing piece for thirty to forty-five minutes each session. Thursday often involves reading other writers' work (Schwabauer supplies sample pieces and commentary) and applying concepts to the student's draft. Friday closes with revision, sharing with a parent or peer, and preparation for the next week.

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. Many families report this low parent intensity is one of the program's most attractive features, a student who has been difficult to motivate in other writing programs often engages with Cover Story because Schwabauer's teaching voice works and the magazine project feels real.

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, concepts that many academic writing programs underweight in favor of thesis-statement mechanics. For students who will eventually want to write creatively, journalistically, or professionally, this orientation shapes their writing life in ways narrow essay-focused programs do not.

Production values. The hardbound student text, the video production quality, the workbook design. Cover Story's physical and digital materials are at the top of the homeschool market. The investment shows in student engagement. Middle-school students who have resisted writing in other programs often describe Cover Story as the first writing program they actually enjoyed, and the production polish is part of that.

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, often kept for years, sometimes shown to prospective colleges as evidence of middle-school writing growth.

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 full Cover Story kit (student text, workbook, video access, teacher helps) runs $200-$300 per the publisher's pricing page as of April 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. Students who finish it have typically aged out of middle school and are ready for high school writing, either OYAN's high school One Year Adventure Novel, or a more formal high-school writing curriculum. 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 complete Cover Story curriculum, hardbound student text, student workbook, streaming video or DVD access, and teacher guide, is priced at approximately $245-$295 per the publisher's product page as of April 2026. Streaming-only access is typically priced slightly lower than the DVD option. Individual components (replacement workbooks for additional students in the same family) are available at lower prices; the student text and video access are the one-time purchase per family.

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 OYAN publisher site, the Cover Story product page, the Daniel Schwabauer author biography, sample lessons and video excerpts, the One Year Adventure Novel companion high-school program, and the Student Writers Workshop community forum. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy's published review of Cover Story. Pricing and curriculum details verified April 2026.