About Us. . . . . . 

We’ve Been Serving Home Educators Since 1988
     We’d like you to have the opportunity to know us, the Gordon family, better. We began selling educational materials in 1988 shortly after we began our home schooling journey. At that time, we operated as Family Education Resources out of the garage of our Tacoma, Wash. home. From the beginning our goal was to help home schooling families be good stewards of their budgets while providing them excellent resources. The entire family was involved in sorting, inventorying and selling the used textbooks and library books we bought from public and Christian school surplus sales.

     In 1990, we moved to a place that included a huge warehouse and retail space in Tukwila, Wash. This move gave us plenty of space for the over 10,000 used books we now had for sale. Having a retail space, separate from our home but on the same property was really a blessing. We gradually added new and consigned books specifically for home schoolers to our offerings. Beverly began offering homes school supervising, achievement testing, and home school classes and workshops in the classroom space in our shop.

 

 
The Gordon Family: Brittany Ann and Beverly are standing, John is sitting
The Gordon Family: Brittany Ann and Beverly are standing, John is sitting
As Home Schoolers, We Understand Your Needs
The Gordon's grandkids: Chris and Victoria in the front row, Caitlynn and little Thomas, with Michael
Here are our grandkids: Chris and Victoria in the front row, Caitlynn and little Thomas, with Michael in the back.

   To enhance our home schooling, we began traveling around the Northwest. To pay for these adventures, we would bring a sampling of our books that we would set up to sell in churches, grange halls, and hotel meeting rooms. When Beverly found herself answering the same questions repeatedly, she began doing talks to families who came to purchase books. It was not long before more people came to hear her talks, than came to buy our books. Fortunately, we did continue to sell enough books to support this ministry.

   Our oldest daughter, Amelia (a.k.a. Amy), graduated from home schooling in June 1992. After graduating she attended culinary arts school. She is now a busy mother of three active boys (13, 10, and 5) and one little princess (3 years). Amy gets plenty of opportunity to use her culinary training with her little brood.

    Angie, our next in line, attended community college through an early entrance program her last two years of her schooling, graduating in 1994. She later attended police academy. Through a courtship relationship, Angie married in November 1996. She and husband, Navy Chief Sam Cavanaugh, have a daughter.

Spelling Power Launches us into Publishing Business
    As our two oldest children became more and more independent, Beverly found she had more free time than she’d enjoyed in 20 years. This gave her time to finally sit down and document the research and methods she used to solve our Angie’s spelling problems. Spelling Power was published in the early Spring of 1994. Since then we have published a variety of different educational titles. We specialize in educational books and resources that are well-researched and are consistent with the philosophy of multi-aged, multi-sensory, multi- learning- style, and individualized educational materials.

    Just before the first edition of Spelling Power rolled off the presses our youngest, Brittany Ann, came to live with us. Two weeks after exhibiting Spelling Power for the first time, Brittany Ann crawled across the room. Well, so much for hours and hours of uninterrupted writing! Brittany is now 16 years old and "doing" High School at home. She has grown up an active participant in our business.

 
Brittany Ann Gordon and Spelling Power
Our Brittany Ann at age 11 was admiring Spelling Power, born about the same time as she was.
We Open Castlemoyle Books & Tea Room in Pomeroy
 
Beverly's parents Bruce and Elsie are standing in front of the fireplace in the Tea Room part of the Castlemoyle Books store. Beverly's dad passed away in May of 2008.

   The growth of our business and Beverly’s health sent us looking for a larger place with a dryer climate than Seattle offered. We found the perfect place in October, 1998, when we happened upon Pomeroy, Wash., and the historic Hotel Revere. Pomeroy is a little town (pop. 1,500) in the S.E. corner of Washington State. Farming and tourism are its claim to fame. The Lewis and Clark Trail follows U.S. Hwy. 12 which is also Main Street.

   Built in 1886, the hotel is on the National Historic Register and once offered 45 guest rooms with the main floor devoted to retail and office space. Having been vacant since 1978, the hotel needed a lot of work. Beverly’s parents moved to Pomeroy along with us to help with the renovations. So far, we have renovated the main floor lobby into a bookstore. We have also completed a tea room, our offices, and warehouse space. We proudly re-opened the store and tearoom in 2006. The 45 hotel rooms have become our home. The upper floors include our home, a "mother-in-law suite" for mom and guest suites. Progress on the hotel is slow since we work on it and live debt-free. We hope to someday offer hospitality to home school families that visit our scenic area.

   Today, nearly 24 years since our adventure began, we are still a family run business and actively home educating. We find the opportunity of sharing devotions, meals and work as a multi-generational family to be a very rewarding lifestyle. We also still feel the call to serve the needs of home and classroom educators. We sincerely hope you will give us the opportunity to serve you and your family too!

    Here's John's parents.