About Castlemoyle

     Our mission is to support parents and teachers in providing quality educational materials for each of their students. To that end, Castlemoyle Books conducts and promotes research projects that facilitate the development of effective educational products and methods. Our goal is to inform as many parents and teachers as possible about research-based, effective teaching methods through our publishing, marketing, workshops and seminars.

     People often ask us the meaning behind our name. Castlemoyle is a shortened version of the "name" of a house we used to live in. After a trip to visit relatives in County Wexford, Ireland, where people do not have street addresses but house names, we decided we needed a name for our house too. We pored through Irish place name books until we found just the right name. Castlemoyle Bally Eireann is Irish for "dilapidated castle belong to an Irish person." (If you ever saw our old place, you would know it was aptly named.) Our business became Castlemoyle Books in an effort to have a more distinctive name.

     The Gordon family began marketing educational materials in 1988 shortly after we began home schooling. At that time, we operated as Family Education Resources out of the garage of our tiny Tacoma, WA home. The entire family was involved in sorting, inventorying and selling the used textbooks we bought from school district surplus auctions. Being a family of book worms our inventory and personal libraries grew almost as fast as our list of customers.

     In 1990, we moved to a house in Tukwila (between Seattle and Tacoma), WA that included a 3,848 square foot warehouse and retail space. This move gave us greater space for the over 10,000 used books we had by then accumulated. Having a retail space separate from our home was a real blessing. We were also gradually adding new (vs. used) items to our inventory. At this time, we also added consigned home school texts to our bookstore offerings. Beverly began doing homes school supervising, achievement testing, and home school classes and workshops in the classroom space in our shop.

     To enhance our home schooling, we began traveling around Washington. To pay for these adventures, we would bring a sampling of our books and set them up in Super 8 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 selling enough books to continue this ministry for some time.

     During our girls teen years there was never a dull moment at the Gordon house. Members of the teen group, C.H.A.T., (founded by our Angie), foreign exchange students, tutoring clients, store customers, family and friends filled our spacious home with lots of love and laughter. You could expect anything to be happening at our house: from 20 exchange students from as many countries (and host families) trying to communicate while playing games like Janga; or five culinary arts school students "creating" meals from what they called "nothing" (we did eat well!), to sheep escaping the fence and eating all of the neighbors corn (how embarrassing.)

     Our oldest daughter, Amelia (a.k.a. Amy), graduated from home schooling in June 1992; attended culinary arts school, and then moved away from home. Angelina (a.k.a. Angie), our next in line, soon began attending Highline Community College through an early entrance program. Angie spent most of her non-school hours as the chief of the Tukwila Police Explorers. This left Beverly with more free time than she had enjoyed in 20 years.

     Not long to suffer with empty-nest syndrome, Beverly began documenting and organizing the research she had conducted in her effort to solve Angelina’s spelling problems. She finished this work, which resulted in Spelling Power, in the spring 1994, not a moment too soon. Just before we published the first edition of Spelling Power our youngest, Brittany Ann, came to live with us. Two weeks after exhibiting Spelling Power for the first time Brittany crawled across the room. Well, so much for the empty nest and hours and hours of uninterrupted writing!

     With two new babies in the house, a bookstore to operate, a tutoring and home school consulting business, another book in the works, and more speaking engagements, Beverly began to feel overwhelmed. Needing to simplify her life, Beverly discontinued working directly with home school students and put we a "For Sale" sign on the bookstore.

     In 1996, we sold the store to Wayne and Jenny Flesch Since we no longer needed the shop space (or as many bedrooms), we looked for a new house. By the end of November 1996, we were living in Lynnwood, Washington.

          Fall 1998 brought us to the threshold of a totally new phase of our family and business life. In August, John gave notice to the Postal Service that he would not be returning from his two-week vacation. He is really enjoying only having one job! He handles all order processing, accounting, and web page and computer maintenance. We find the opportunity of sharing devotions, meals and work as a family to be very rewarding lifestyle.

        The growth of our business and Beverly's increasing problems with her back sent the Gordon family on a series of trips through Southeast Washington looking for a new location with a temperate, dry climate. In late October, 1998, we happened upon Pomeroy, Washington, home of the historic Hotel Revere a 17,000+ square foot former hotel that was built in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.