Book Review: Learning to See The Land ***

Annette's note: This is not a book for kids, although kids may well like the pictures and some of the text. So this rating does NOT incorporate the opinion of Alec, my son/kid assistant. I review it because it is a book that can be used with and for kids.

Burton K. Kummerow, Christine H. O'Tooler, and R. Scott Stephenson, Pennsylvania's Forbes Trail: Gateways and Getaways Along the Legendary Route From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh (2008)

I first learned how to "see" rural western Pennsylvania in 1993, in the company of Pastor Weiser, an ordained Lutheran minister who used his many personal connections in the area to take visitors beyond the tourist trail. Our group, from throughout the University of California system, had been studying Early America in Colonial Williamsburg for three months. Now, we made contact with the colonial past's tenuous survival into the present, as we travelled among the German-Americans of Lancaster County. We visited a market staffed by Amish and Mennonite farmers in their otherworldly costumes, and pondered how deep the food roots of the amazingly artificial "traditional" Whoopie Pie could possibly go. We climbed the stairs of a rural house, and met an eighty-year-old Amish bookbinder at work. We descended to a church basement for a scrumptious lunch of Pennsylvania "Dutch" grub cooked by Pennsylvania "Dutch" ladies, while a cheesy but earnest local duo sang German-American folk songs. Pastor Weiser kept us grounded, as did all the Pennsylvanians we met: These locals not quaint relics, but real and complex people who inhabited the same world as us. This tour was worth a million boring roadside "historic landmarks."

It was the memory of this day in Pennsylvania, and my realization that I have so many vivid memories of it, that piqued my interest in Pennsylvania's Forbes Trail: Gateways and Getaways Along the Legendary Route From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

Published to commemorate this year's 250^th anniversary of the French and Indian War, the book's timing is not altogether lucky: This is not so much a book for reading as it is a luxurious road trip guide. As I write, gas is pushing $4 a gallon, so it might actually work better as a guide for the armchair traveler.

That said, and assuming that the road trip has any future, this is an intriguing and creative approach to engaging visitors in the presence of the past.

Inviting the reader to retrace the route through western Pennsylvania taken by the British and Colonial joint forces during the French and Indian War, the book focuses on John Forbes , a Scottish officer who won military victory, brokered careful negotiations with Indian allies of the French and pacifist Quakers, and generally set about winning hearts and minds as well as battlefield victory. The creators are upfront in their hope that this story will serve as a model in an age when we have been more inclined to resort to saber-rattling and aggression than to diplomacy. Fair enough.

True, the muddy trail that Forbes, his men, and others followed has since mostly given way to asphalt. But despite dramatic changes in the landscape, the Pennsylvania of the 1750s has not vanished. Even the original unpaved road has been preserved in part, the authors tell us, and is open to the public. Some of the taverns on what is now called the Old Lancaster Road, such as the General Warren Inne in Malvern, already existed in the mid-eighteenth century. Looking for colonial survivals, and understanding that things aren't always as young (or old) as they seem is a great way for everyone to learn to think historically.

Recognizing that most vacationing families who might undertake the quest lack the obsessiveness of historians, however, the authors envision the trip as one that should be broken up with distractions. Capsule descriptions not only of historic sites and museums, but also of restaurants and even theme parks, offer plenty of advice for breaking up the journey.

While a journey through the area with this guide will encourage travelers to take a deeper interest in the environment—both built and natural—it would have been even better to have included a broader focus on the region's people, both past and present. Longer excerpts from letters and diaries (rather than indirect quotations with snippets of the original, more readable, language don't cut it) would have helped, as well would interviews with modern residents. The engaging and vivid illustrations help distract from the often ponderous text.

My question for the book's creators is whether they were interested in cultivating the broadest possible audience. Was it tested with families? If the intention was always to appeal to a niche audience of military history geeks, fair enough. But the theme and tone of the text may be offputting to anyone who doesn't fall in that group, and that's a shame.

Anyone considering writing future guides like this should think hard about producing a book that will actually have wide appeal. There is a great fear in America of dumbing down history by making it accessible, and we cut off too many people's interest in the past by limiting the scope and appeal of public history. It doesn't have to be military history to be history, nor does it have to rely on dense text. The sooner that we recognize this, the faster we can rescue historical literacy from the abyss.

Homeschoolers and teachers: Use with caution. Read through and think about this book before you hit the road, and be prepared to put in some work to use it effectively. Resist the temptation to read large portions of the dry narrative aloud to the family or your students. Instead, translate it into your own words. Plan your own narrative. This book doesn't teach kids well, but, with it as a guide, you can.

Evacuees, Blitz and Books: A List From My WW2 Schools Visits

I love my schools roadshow about life in World War Two Britain: When a kid blurts out "That's just like The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe!", my day is officially made.

But I count it secondary whether a kid becomes interested in this particular subject so long as my time at schools stimulates new ideas and activity. Some kids go off and interview grandparents about WWII America, some are fascinated enough by the old British Monopoly set to pull out their own to compare, and it's especially lovely to motivate some kids to read my novel, I'll admit it, particularly if reading it brings them full circle to an interest in history. Mostly, however, I'm happy just to have jumpstarted kids' thinking, especially given the relentless drilling and testing that characterizes public schooling today.

For those kids who do want to explore further the subject of British life in WW2, here are just a few suggestions for books to add to your school or home library. They may be available from library wholesalers, they may be available from Amazon.com (often in used editions: see links below for availability), and they are certainly available direct from the British Amazon.co.uk (you will need to set up an account, exactly in the same way as American Amazon.) The links are to Amazon.com.

The list is arranged in order of reading/subject matter challenge, beginning with the most accessible. Oh, and don't miss the music, either: Check out the Amazon list at left for my selections from wartime Britain.

Rebecca Hunter with Angela Downey, A Wartime Childhood (Family Scrapbook Series) (Evans Brothers, 2005)

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Today, Angela is a grandmother of six. But she was four years old in 1941, when her mother took her to live in the countryside, safe from the bombs raining down on London. There, in a small village, Angela lived with a foster family for the next three years, seeing her mother only once a year.

Angela tells her own story of life as a wartime evacuee (and the story of her family members), which personalizes what is actually a broad introduction to life in Wartime England. A picture book, Wartime Childhood includes the key themes: air raids, evacuation of children, food rationing, and war work. The text is sparse, but the graphics are varied, and the book also includes well-presented and contextualized documents (including a letter home that Angela wrote after her father was killed in action.)

This is a highly recommended introduction to the subject for ages 7 and up, very much accessible to American kids, and sure to create good talking points.

Peter Hepplewhite, An Evacuee's Journey (History Journey Series) (Hodder Wayland, 2003)

Much like A Wartime Childhood (above), An Evacuee's Journey threads the story of one child throughout the book. In this case, however, he's Joseph Thompson, he's fictional, and his story is told in third person. The text is heavy on facts and figures, and includes broad context: It begins by explaining the rise of Hitler, for example. However, it is nicely balanced with more accessible materials about everyday life.

A short anecdote about "Joe's" life that relates directly to the text kicks off each two-page chapter. We see Joe reacting to the announcement of war in September, 1939, for example, and read about his being fostered by a farmer and his wife. Short and lively quotes add the voices of real evacuees, and photographs are varied: alongside the black and white photos of wartime kids, check out the staged color photo of a week's worth of food rations. Pithy captions explain the graphics, and help promote critical thinking: Kids are urged to note how an advertiser uses the theme of evacuation to sell a drink mix. I was especially impressed that the book touches upon the variety of experiences among evacuees: Joe is happy, but his best friend is removed from a foster home after repeated beatings. The author, to his credit, explains without rancor that many foster families were ill-equipped and unwilling to care for evacuees.

Great for ages 8 and up.

Rachel Wright, World War II (Crafts Topics Series) (Franklin Watts, 2008)

Despite the sweeping title, this title is primarily about the wartime British Home Front. The text is a little more "textbooky" than most, and the focus is on the adult experiences of food rationing, clothes rationing, mass entertainment, and war work. The appeal is in the activities: As a nice counterpoint to the whiteness of the Brits in contemporary photos, two Indian-British kids are the models who demonstrate making a fake tin helmet, a truly repulsive-looking mock-apricot flan (tart) from a wartime recipe using carrots, and a cardboard U.S. aircraft.

My complaints? There's a "Now what?" quality to the activities. It would be great to have suggestions for dramatic play to go along with the crafts, and a text that sparks empathy and imagination. Still, if you can get it cheap, it might be a useful addition. Ages 8 and up.

Terry Deary, The Blitzed Brits (Horrible Histories Series)

True to the series' title and reputation, this is horrible history at its best. Read about the evacuees whose parents didn't want them back when the war ended… The evacuees who arrived with fleas and had no idea how to eat at a table… And don't miss the stories of people who used the black market to cheat on rationing. It's good for everyone to learn that the people of the past weren't always perfect, and, no, this doesn't make kids depressed and cynical as the Appropriateness Police blithely assume. Indeed, kids are gleeful to discover that adults are people, too, and that their behavior can make kids seem morally superior. Check out the recipes for truly awful wartime food to try at home. No color pictures, but plenty of cheery black and white cartoons. Ages 8 and up.

Nina Bawden, Carrie's War (book and DVD)

The book's a classic, but whether kids like it or not will depend on their general taste in books. This is a gentle story of an evacuee and her brother who are sent to rural Wales, far from the bombs of the Blitz. The strength of the book is in the characters, from the terrified Auntie Lou, to the bullying Mr. Evans, the sensible (and amusing) Albert Sandwich, and the daffy Mrs. Gotobed. Nina Bawden was herself an evacuee in Wales, and, although she maintains that Carrie's War isn't autobiographical, she writes from experience. Ages 9 and up.

The Carrie's War DVD…is okay. It has far too much of a modern tone for my taste, so that the characters seem anachronistic for the Forties. Mr. Evans is too sympathetic (to appeal to the adult audience, I suspect), while Carrie and Nick seem too worldly and self-assured. However, the BBC has not yet released the 1975 version on DVD, so this is the one we have. Still worth a look. Ages 9 and up.

Michelle Magorian, Goodnight, Mr. Tom

A lonely and sweet old man takes an abused evacuee into his home and heart. One very humane novel with a sweet ending. Ages 10 and up.

Annette Laing, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (Confusion Press, 2007)

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American kids from 2008 become British kids in 1940. Enough said, since it is (full disclosure) my book.

Michelle’s List: Books for James, A British Kid Who Is Into American History

My friend and fellow historian Michelle recently asked me to make a list of books I would recommend for James, a British kid (age 8) she knows who is interested in American history.

At first I was a bit flummoxed: As I often complain (watch this space: I will continue to do so) too many American history books for kids tend toward the sort of worthy, well-intended, and dreary books that kids don't care to read.

So I've come up with a few books that I do think will appeal not only to British kids with a budding interest in American history, but also to American kids.

Most of the these titles are easily available from Amazon's British branch, amazon.co.uk, so Michelle can save on shipping when she orders the books for delivery within the UK. J

Here's the list of books for Michelle. The links are to http://www.amazon.com/ (the American Amazon! Gosh, this gets complicated…)

1. The Horrible History of the USA: As author Terry Deary likes to say, it's history with the boring bits left out. America is NOT the best entry in the series, and Deary is not a huge fan of American culture, so please, Appropriateness Nazis and nervous parents, don't say you weren't warned. However, my son, a thoroughly patriotic American, adores this book. What kid wouldn't be tickled to learn that George Washington owned slaves, and all about the Salem Witch Trials? Chances are, James already owns this, because British kids love Deary's books. So on to…
   

1. You Wouldn't Want To Be an American Colonist! A Settlement You'd Rather Not Start. All the gruesome bits of the Jamestown fiasco are here in this British book, cheerfully depicted with cartoon illustrations: disease (although why yellow fever is fingered, and not malaria, is beyond me, but never mind: James will find out better from other sources), fighting between Indians and English (ditto for the omission of the Powhatans' political maneuvers around the English, which get left out, but, again, no big), cannibalism (kids love that and, no, they don't try it at home) and much more. Look, what they get wrong is pretty minor stuff. What they get right is terrific: They interest kids in some pretty specific historical topics, most of which are dealt with very poorly in American books. Also in the You Wouldn't Want…series: Live in a Wild West Town, American Pioneer, Sail With Christopher Columbus, Sail on the Mayflower, Civil War Soldier, Boston Tea Party, and more coming all the time.
   

   
   

2. Thomas Coram: The Man Who Saved Children: Thomas Coram was an 18^th century Englishman and sea captain who spent many years building ships in Massachusetts, before he got fed up with the locals and went home. In London, he managed to get enough support to build the Foundling Hospital, an orphanage for babies whose mothers simply couldn't afford to raise them. Coram was also one of the Trustees of the colony of Georgia, and I don't for one minute doubt that George Whitefield was inspired to found Bethesda Home for Boys by Coram's example. This is a fun book with lots of colorful illustrations and photos about Coram, his years in America, and the Hospital. A great example of Britain and America's "special relationship," and a lovely book that fascinated my son. Only hitch: This small-press book is hard to find, thanks to the stranglehold of Big Bad Book Corps., but the British Amazon.co.uk will source it for you.
   

   
   

3. If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America: This is interesting, rather than fun, and I find the series to which it belongs a bit "school-y". But if James is already hooked on American history, the series, and this book in particular, might do the trick. Written in a question and answer format, the book is heavy on text, but still well-illustrated in color. My main complaints are that it could be livelier (always a problem, especially when dealing with a subject and format that doesn't loan itself to humor), and that it is ahistorical: The book doesn't give much idea of the differences in slave life over place and time, and this leaves readers with an unsatisfactory vagueness. Still, at least it's reasonably honest about slavery.
   

   
   

4. Samuel Eaton's Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy: There was a Samuel Eaton on board the Mayflower, and this is a reasonable conjecture of what his life might have been like. Better, it focuses on a day that, while hardly out of the ordinary, marks a milestone in an otherwise rather quiet existence. We meet Samuel on his first full day of work in the fields, at age seven, and share his anxiety that he prove himself grown up in his father's eyes. Best of all, the book is illustrated with photos of costumed actors, shot at Plimoth Plantation, the living history museum in Massachusetts. This gives the story a three-dimensional quality that my son commented made it seem real. On the downside, not much in the way of humor, and my son pronounced the book fair to middling. Still, a nice book that I catch myself revisiting from time to time.
   

   
   

Needless to say, this list is not exhaustive. I'm always on the look-out for genuinely enjoyable books on American history, fiction included, that don't preach, teach too obviously, or bore the socks off the reader. If you know of books that you think meet my criteria, please comment below.

Oh, and Michelle? Might want to suggest that James' parents take him to The American Museum in Britain, which is in a beautiful house on the outskirts of Bath. I'll review it soon.

Book Review #2: A Street Through Time ***** (Five Stars)

Annette's note: Starting with this review, I'll be using a quick-reference rating guide.

Five Stars= I couldn't put this down, and neither could my kid tester, Alec (age 8). We have read (or will read) it again. It's inspiring, thought-provoking, and very entertaining. A truly exceptional book.

Four Stars= Excellent and enjoyable history for kids. Both Alec and I enjoyed this very much.

Three Stars= Commendable effort. Headed in the right direction, but needs a bit of work to make it more engaging.

Two Stars= Fair. It might work for a kid who is already engaged in this specific topic, but won't fire up too many kids who aren't. Typically pedestrian stuff.

One Star= Beware. This is the sort of kids' history I'm complaining about.

Anne Millard and Steve Noon (illustrator), A Street
Through Time: A 12,000-Year Journey Along The Same Street (New York: DK Children, 1998)

For many years, a well-meaning community service club here in Snipesville donated the proceeds of its annual benefit breakfast to buy dictionaries for every kid in town. I used to have to restrain myself from suggesting that such a gift was about as exciting to the average kid as a clod of dirt, because, well, that would have been a bit rude of me. But maybe I should have been brave and spoken up, and suggested that the good ladies of the club buy a truckload of A Street Through Time instead.

This is, quite simply, a book that no kid should be without.

Our copy (I say our, because Alec is resigned to my laying claim to it, too) is in a shocking state. The cover is long gone, and there are ominous inch-log rips near the spine on several pages. We have owned ours since Alec was five, but he can often still be found lying on the floor with this enormous volume opened in front of him, pressing his nose up to the illustrations to see all the details (and no, he doesn't need glasses.)

A Street Through Time tells the story of one fictional northern European street, from 10,000 B.C. (or B.C.E. if you prefer) to the present day. The "street" and the events that take place on it are generic enough that many readers can imagine it to be wherever they like, although it's pretty clearly somewhere in England. Each double-page spread of this outsize book covers a different period, and the pace of the book slows as we enter the modern era. In other words, the early pages jump from 10,000 B.C. to 2,000 B.C. to 600 B.C., while the last few pages divide the 19^th century into three periods, before jumping (rather startlingly) to a late 20^th/early 21^st century present.

But this is not a reading book in any conventional sense.

Adults who believe that only text and facts are worthy for children's history are terribly mistaken, and A Street Through Time is a perfect illustration of why. This book teaches children (and adults who pay attention) what history is.

Each double-page is an enormous and beautifully detailed, vividly colored illustration of the street. You must hold the book in your hands to appreciate how gorgeous it is, because no written description or computer image can do the book justice. It's the sort of illustration that eschews artsy abstraction for the sort of vivid and realistic detail that kids (and let's be honest, most adults) prefer.

The main text is a brief (fewer than 50 words) description of the historical context (discussing how, for example, the street's residents have developed ironwork since we last met them.) All around the edges of each picture are text snippets that highlight some things to look for, such as the building of a stone castle where previously there had been a wooden fort, or the outdoor toilets in the middle of the settlement (these are often in use in the pictures, to kids' delight. Who knew that people in the past went to the bathroom?)

But the pictures themselves serve as a text for teaching kids about change over time (the very definition of history) Often, the street is captured at a less than tranquil moment in its history. We see cattle rustled, Vikings invade, and plague strike. Oddly, we don't see the impact of modern warfare, because the book skips much of the 20^th century because, I presume, it would be hard to depict while maintaining the deliberate vagueness of place.

In the pictures, we see not only changes in dress, crafts, customs, religion, and how people relate to each other, but also the ways in which people alter the natural environment: What began as a wooded hill behind the settlement is gradually deforested, and then built over for example.

What's most thought-provoking (I hope) is that the book vividly illustrates that history and progress are not the same thing. After viewing the street as it was during Iron Age, complete with thatched huts, modest wooden canoes, and wooden palisades around the settlement, we turn the page (and five hundred years) to find the glory that was Romano-Britain. A huge stone temple, an amphitheater, paved roads and an embanked river give an impressive display of (to quote Monty Python) what the Romans did for us. Yet, turn the page once more, to AD 600 (five hundred years later), and all that is left are a couple of ruins, as the street, now populated by the descendants of invading Angles and Saxons, returns to wooden huts and an unbanked river. Magic.

The book shows the zigzag that is history, and it also shows continuity as well as change. The holy site of the Stone Age becomes the Roman Temple becomes the stone church, which over time acquires a spire, and then a rebuilt tower, before burning down in the civil war of the seventeenth century. It is then rebuilt, and repeatedly modernized into the present day.

The success of A Street Through Time is partly reflected in how often it is imitated. Since its publication, the format has spun off and inspired all sorts of similar titles. All are welcome, because it's an inexhaustible genre that still has much potential, and I will review some of them here. None, however, quite matches the cleverness of the original.

This book will stimulate a child's interest in history of all kinds, so even if European history is not your thing, please don't hold that against it. For kids, the most important thing is NOT absorbing "information" (i.e. committing facts to memory). It is to gain a sense of history, and an enthusiasm to learn more. Kids gain from A Street Through Time a sense of chronology and change. Most of all, they love it. This book is a terrific investment in imagination and critical thought.

For more book recommendations, visit my
Non-Boring History Recommendations for Kids.

History In The News: Facts, Facts, Facts

Every six months or so, the media predictably trots out some poll that reveals and bemoans young Americans' historical ignorance. Bob Herbert has an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times about the latest of that ilk.

Whether it shows that young people think that the Civil War began in 1776, or that Pearl Harbor was a famous jazz singer, or that George Washington was named after the city, the dismal results of each study are offered up to confirm, yet again, that, yes, we're doomed as a democracy.

Let me start by asking a radical but unloaded question: Why are we concerned that kids know the particular facts that such polls emphasize?

Let's think about it. Maybe it seems self-evident. Most of us will mutter about "needing to know where we're been to know where we're going," (huh?) or being well-rounded informed citizens (huh, again?), but do we really ponder why we care about particular facts, other than feeling a vague sense of unease?

Often, we're upset because young people apparently don't know anything about an historical event that's important to us personally, either because we lived through it, or because our parents did. Do any of us feel alarmed when kids profess ignorance and indifference toward the French and Indian War? C'mon, really? But if the same kids were to shrug their shoulders at, say, the Korean War or the Carter Presidency, we flip.

Partly, of course, we value recent history especially because we still see its consequences playing out in the present: 1968 has been the elephant in the room during the last two presidencies, for example. But, mostly, I would suggest, we value our children's knowledge of the recent past because we are alarmed at the idea of our own lived history vanishing into the mists of time.

I recall a faculty meeting at my first teaching job, where one of my colleagues, in his fifties, complained that our college students had no recollection of Watergate. I said that I sympathized: It was hard for me to feel the same way because I was living in England when Nixon resigned. "I was also ten years old," I added, with an unprofessional smirk around the middle-aged faces in the room. My colleague shuddered, but then I corrected myself. "No, wait, I was nine." Ooh, I was rotten, but it was a good point: How could Watergate have the same resonance for me? How could I be brought to comprehend the resonance that it had for my older colleagues?

Now, admittedly, my dad had the presence of mind in 1974 to drag me out of bed, and emphasize to me that an American president had never, ever resigned before, and that I should watch this historic event on the BBC. I agreed that this was something I wanted to see, but all I would remember ever after was that Nixon was on the verge of tears. I had never seen a grown man get emotional, and I felt so sorry for him. And so, all my life, I've had a soft spot for Richard Nixon that my American elders have never understood. Watergate has not had, and cannot have, the same emotional meaning for me as it had for those who lived through it as Americans of voting age. As an historian, however, I have forced myself to confront this and to read up on the subject. Result? I have a decent intellectual grasp of its impact on American culture, because I have done my best to put myself in the place of those who experienced it as American adults.

It's misleading of me, however, to imply that no events that predate the 20^th century make it onto the history ignorance pollsters' radar. The Civil War, the Bill of Rights: These are iconic political events that we want teenagers to know. But do we want to know them in their historical context (how many American adults truly understand that the Bill wasn't handed down on gold tablets, but the highly-contested product of fierce debate?), or do we want kids just to "know" the simple facts themselves?

Which brings me to my main point: If we agree that, yes, kids should know when the Civil War happened, and who Adolf Hitler was, what do those who churn out these tedious polls actually propose we should do about it? The answer seems obvious: Redouble our efforts to teach kids these important facts. Seems wonderfully reasonable, doesn't it? Good, solid, old-fashioned, back-to-basics stuff that reflects an awful lot of history teaching, from kindergarten through college.

The problem is that it doesn't work.

Kids study for quizzes and tests without enthusiasm, and spit back the facts, which we all then assume they have "learned." They haven't, because nobody got them excited about history, and so they simply dutifully memorize what is put in front of them. Within months, weeks, even days, the facts have left them, because they never even vaguely understood what those facts represented to begin with. They don't understand the historical context, the particular cultures and societies that produced the events we hold sacred, and how differently they were understood by those who lived through them. They don't, in short, understand history, which is the study of change over time. And professional historians have done a truly crappy job of explaining this to the public.

That's why I encounter college students who think that the World War Two was a nineteenth-century event…or who cannot understand that the 1800s were the 19^th century, not the 18^th…or for whom the past has congealed into an ahistorical mess of facts, factoids, and non-facts. That is why an ordinary, undistinguished, but passionate historian at a no-name Southern university is throwing herself heart and soul into writing News from Snipesville.

In his Times article, Bob Herbert has cottoned on to the idea that ignorance of history somehow demonstrates that American high schools are failing students, by failing to provide them with the "intellectual tools" required to take on the 2lst century. But what are those intellectual tools? He doesn't say. Heads up, Bob: It's critical thinking. It's dealing with the past as if it were, to its participants, as meaningful and immediate as the present is to us. Let's get the focus off of what we teach kids, and swing the spotlight onto HOW we teach them. So long as we cling to the virtues of isolated facts, absurdly wide-ranging survey courses, and mindnumbing high-stakes tests, and not on exciting students with the intensive study of lived experience in the past, we will never fix the problems, any of them. And the Henny Penny History Polls will keep on appearing.

(For more on what I propose we do about it, watch this space. And let me hear your suggestions, too.)

Post Script: Book Review, You Wouldn’t Want To…

David Salariya, creator of the splendid You Wouldn't Want To… series, has written me a lovely email to comment on my review. He notes, "We have about 50 titles in this series in print and have eight new titles in production." Wow. I must admit, I hadn't really done my homework, and didn't realize quite how many books his company has produced… That's very exciting news, as is David's mentioning that a TV series based on the books is in development here in the States.

As to my criticism that few of the books feature girls and women as the "You" of the title, David points out, "We have published 'A Greek Slave' from the point of view of a mother sold into slavery, losing her children and husband, 'on the Mayflower, a female passenger' ' Henry VIII from the point of view of Catherine Parr', 'Medieval Castle' from point of view of female kitchen servant. 'Evacuee', from point of view of girl sent to the country, 'Victorian Servant' from point of view of girl going into service at the age of 13."

Most excitingly (from my standpoint as an historian who deals with the connections between British and American history), David writes, "We have a really good title in production at the moment on the women's suffrage movement, this is being told from the point of view of an Aunt in America telling her niece in England about the suffrage movement and the mother in England telling her (the daughter/niece) what it was like being a suffragette in Britain.

However, he does admit that most of the books focus on men. He explains the relative lack of women characters: "As for woman as main characters, we have had some women, although we have a problem with women in that they do not have the freedom to go to places and move about in the way that men did, however we are aware of the lack of history from a female point of view..."

Sorry, David, but I have to take issue there! Women were not only present throughout the recorded past, but (as your own series shows), actors in it, especially when we focus on social and cultural history. May I suggest, for example, a title that takes as its starting point Laurel Ulrich's splendid Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Midwife's Tale? Martha Ballard, the midwife of the title, certainly got out and about. I can see it now… You Wouldn't Want To Be a Midwife in Early Maine (An Adventure in Obstetrics You'd Rather Not Have) OK, so I am NOT serious about the title, but the concept is definitely doable. Martha did much more than deliver babies, by the way!

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Book Review #1: You Wouldn’t Want To… Miss This Great Series of History Books

[Annette's Note: Too few history books for kids are both entertaining and thought-provoking. The problem is that writers for children are seldom trained historians, while trained historians generally don't write for the public, and especially not for children.
As I discover enjoyable and stimulating history books for kids, both fiction and non-fiction, I will share my finds with you on this blog. Every book I recommend has also passed the AlecTest, namely, does my eight-year-old son, Alec, also love this book? To view our ongoing list of favorites, please visit Dr. Annette Laing's NON-BORING History Books, DVDs, and Websites for Kids. If, while browsing there or here on the Blog, you choose to purchase any books by clicking on the Amazon links, you will support my work to make history accessible for kids: Amazon gives a small commission, at no cost to you.]

You Wouldn't Want To…

Various authors. Illustrated by David Antram. Franklin Watts (An Imprint of Scholastic.)

Hooking kids' interest in the past is easiest when they are enticed to imagine themselves there. Who wouldn't want to pretend to live in a castle in medieval England, or rendezvous with the Pilgrims as they disembark from the Mayflower? But kids also prefer their history to have an "ick" factor: The sanitized stuff about cardboard heroes that makes it into school textbooks is much less fun than Henry VIII chopping off the heads of his wives, or the grim business of mummification in Ancient Egypt. The ever-growing You Wouldn't Want To series of books appeals to both these demands, by inviting kids to imagine themselves living in the past, while showing them that, well, they really wouldn't want to.

Created by illustrator and publisher David Salariya (who, I'm happy to say, is a native of Dundee, Scotland, my home town), the series (known in the UK as Danger Zone) is especially exciting for its diverse choice of subjects. So many superb history books for children have been produced in the UK during the past twenty years, but, frustratingly, most focus on British and, to a lesser extent, European history, and do so in ways that sometimes make them difficult for American kids to connect. Salariya, however, has wisely chosen historical settings that range, albeit unevenly, over the whole gamut of world history, from the predictable (You Wouldn't Want To Be An Egyptian Mummy!) to the—by Western standards—exotic (You Wouldn't Want to Be an Inca Mummy! takes kids to sixteenth-century Peru.)

Let me rush to add here that mummification is far from the only theme of the series. All the themes are ambitiously and successfully specific, avoiding the vagueness about time and place that weakens many kids' history books. Kids learn that the past isn't just one giant lump of "Back Then": Culture and society change constantly, and a few years or miles can make all the difference.

You Wouldn't Want to Be a Victorian Mill Worker, for example, takes readers to England in 1842, during the grueling early years of the Industrial Revolution, and asks them to imagine being an 11-year-old child taken from the workhouse to labor in a cotton mill in the northern city of Manchester. The book gleefully illustrates the many terrible things that could (and did) befall child workers in early factories (scalping, crushed fingers, and various respiratory ailments) before the introduction and enforcement of safety laws. It also introduces kids to Lancashire dialect (with translations), and in so doing, neatly makes the point that English comes in many varieties, any one of which is not necessarily intelligible to other English speakers. Most excitingly, the link between slavery in America and near-slavery in Manchester is made explicit: The book begins with a quick explanation of cotton production and the export trade to England.

This isn't, honestly, as heavy as it sounds. Salariya's stable of writers don't shy from doing their homework, and consulting with experts when necessary: You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Soldier! , for example, was written with the help of Stephen Johnson, the author of several books on archeology. But the authors also bring experience in teaching and writing for children to the table, and they don't hesitate to use humor to keep their readers engaged.

This approach is especially refreshing when it comes to American history. The teaching of U.S. history in schools is handicapped by the ways in which we conceive of history curriculum either as a course in patriotism, a lesson in self-esteem, or both. The problem is that neither approach impresses kids, and that the good intentions tend to backfire when young people encounter real history in college and discover for themselves that the candy-coated and dull history they were fed (and yet rarely absorbed) is nonsense. You Wouldn't Want To Be An American Colonist! will do more to interest kids in the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown than a whole stack of tedious and preachy textbooks. The story is gross, funny, and (hallelujah!) true. Kids vicariously experience everything from the "Starving Time" of the winter of 1609-10, when colonists resorted to eating their shoes and even to cannibalism, to the tense and often violent relationship between the settlers and Algonquian Indians. Finally, of course, the colony survives by planting the profitable crop of tobacco. Trust me, kids raised in an increasingly smoke-free society love to marvel at this.

The American history titles in the series also include Live in a Wild West Town, Sail With Christopher Columbus, Be A Civil War Soldier, Be An American Pioneer, Be At The Boston Tea Party, Sail On The Mayflower, Work on the Railroad.

My main criticism of the series is that non-Western history and recent topics get short shrift. While Latin America (Aztec Sacrifice, Inca Mummy, Mayan Soothsayer) and Asia (Great Wall of China) are represented, there is still much to be done in both areas, and I've yet to find a title in the series that deals with sub-Saharan African history. Also, while the series includes volumes on the Titanic and Apollo 13, I would love to see more titles that deal with the twentieth century, although I'm well aware that political considerations don't encourage that. Finally, although I freely admit that I haven't read every volume, I have yet to come across a You Wouldn't Want To book that features a girl as the character with whom kids identify. Several of the volumes, however, cleverly avoid identifying the "you" of the title…and since it's boys who often need the most persuasion to read, I'll give the editors a pass…for now.

The editions available in the U.S have been slightly adapted to American needs: When prices are translated into modern terms, for example, dollars are used for comparison. Each slim volume in the series is cheerfully illustrated with the colorful artwork of David Antram. His amusing and bold color cartoons help to make the often-grim subject matter digestible, even to easily-scared parents.

If you want to check out the series before buying, Salariya Book Company's site generously makes four You Wouldn't Want To titles available (FREE) on the web: Egyptian Mummy, Polar Explorer, Roman Gladiator, and Sail On The Whaling Ship Essex. The online books aren't as graphically appealing as their dead-tree versions, but a fun feature that allows you to roll over characters to see speech bubbles compensates, as, of course, does the price… Go to: http://www.salariya.com/web_books/pages/web_books.html

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