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Official Release: Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century

August 24, 2009 in book reviews, children's books, Colonial Period, English History, Homeschooling, Modern History by admin | No comments

It’s done! Finished, edited, proofed and approved. And we have copies on the shelves!

The sequel to Famous Men of the Renaissance and Reformation.

Rather than reprinting Famous Men of Modern Times (which is a bit uneven in both tone and selection), we have made the decision to complete the Famous Men biography series with four new books:

  • Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century (Queen Elizabeth to Louis XIV) – available now
  • Famous Men of the 18th Century (Isaac Newton to Robespierre) – 2010
  • Famous Men of the 19th Century (Napoleon Bonaparte to Mark Twain) – 2011
  • Famous men of the 20th Century (Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan) – 2012

The 17th century was an age of religious wars and revolutions. The French had seven civil wars of religion from 1570-1590. The German Empire had a religious civil war from 1618-1648. The English had a civil war from 1642-1649. It was also the century in which the English and French settlements were founding colonies in North America at Jamestown, Plymouth, Boston, & Quebec. But learning the wars will not convey to students what the times were like. Biographies will. Twenty-eight key individuals are profiled in chronological order:

Birth Crowned Death

1519

1547

1589

 Catherine de’ Medici
1553

1589

1610

 Henry of Navarre (Henry IV)
1533

1558

1603

 Elizabeth I
1540

1595

 Sir Francis Drake
1552

1618

 Sir Walter Raleigh
1566

1603

1625

 James I
1552

1610

 Matteo Ricci
1564

1616

 William Shakespeare
1580

1631

 John Smith
1583

1634

 Wallenstein
1594

1611

1632

 Gustavus Adolphus
1575

1635

 Samuel de Champlain
1564

1642

 Galileo
1585

1642

 Cardinal Richelieu
1600

1625

1649

 Charles I
1599

1658

 Oliver Cromwell
1590

1620

1657

 William Bradford
1588

1629

1649

 John Winthrop
1623

1662

 Blaise Pascal
1606

1669

 Rembrandt
1608

1674

 John Milton
1632

1675

 Johannes Vermeer
1630

1660

1685

 Charles II
1629

1674

1696

 Jan Sobieski
1650

1688

1702

 William of Orange (William III)
1632

1704

 John Locke
1653

1706

 Johan Pachelbel
1638

1643

1715

 Louis XIV

I am particularly pleased with how the chapters on the colonial founders turned out. John Smith (Jamestown), Samuel de Champlain (Quebec), William Bradford (Plymouth), and John Winthrop (Boston) all have incredible and fascinating stories. A simple comparison of their backgrounds and their reasons for leaving England and France will give students far more understanding about the founding of the colonies than any textbook can.

I also enjoyed greatly retelling the events of the English Civil War, the Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. These events (with a number of larger-than-life characters) were critical in shaping the political ideas of America’s Founding Fathers – whose stories I am looking forward to telling in Famous Men of the 18th Century.

I’ve also included accounts of the lives of artists (Rembrandt, Vermeer), a musician (Johan Pachelbel), and writers (Shakespeare & Milton) so that students will become acquainted with more than just the political history of the times.

The reading level is targeted on upper elementary/jr. high, but even older students and adults will find much here that gets left out of the textbook accounts.

Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century is 28 chapters, 228 pages and retails for $17.95, directly from Greenleaf Press.

Get ‘em while they’re hot off the press!

- Rob Shearer, (author and) Publisher

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Major Upgrade to the Greenleaf Press online store

August 7, 2009 in book reviews, children's books, Middle Ages, Modern History by admin | No comments

I’ve just finished several days of quite rewarding work re-organizing and generally making some welcome improvements to the Greenleaf Press website.
The short version: We’ve added categories and organized the books in a much more logical and convenient fashion for each of the major periods of history. Rather than having to wade through all 50 or so books in the Ancient Egypt category, you will now see our Study Package books on the first page, with links to Reference Books, Historical Fiction & Biographies, and Activity & Coloring Books. Here’s the way it now looks:
greenleaf_egypt

Over the past two years, my goal has been to make online shopping as easy and straightforward as browsing a print catalog. We had ten years experience putting a print catalog together, and I really enjoyed finding books, reviewing books, and then finding a spot in the catalog to put a group of books together that I wanted to highlight.

It’s been a struggle to figure out how to do this on the web. Over dinner the other night, I was discussing the current state of the web site with our son and daughter-in-law. Both have worked for Greenleaf in the past, and they have made lots of contributions to the development of books and web presence. While talking with them, I had an epiphany on how to present books to shoppers on the web.

Adding categories and additional links give more organization to how we present books and lets shoppers more easily find what they are looking for.

It has also let me re-discover and give more prominence to certain books and groups of books that were getting lost in long lists on several parts of our site.

Case in point: Ralph Moody’s Little Britches series. These are terrific books, and more timely now than ever. They were set in difficult economic times around the turn of the century and tell a powerful story of hard work, honesty, determination, and adaptation to change. But we carry 145 books in our main category of 19th century. How could shoppers find the books when they are listed on one page out of 15? The answer of course, was to help shoppers find what they are looking for by giving them more descriptive categories and links at the “top” page of each section.

Here’s what the re-designed entry page to our books on the 19th century now looks like:

greenleaf_19thThe Little Britches Series now has its own page and link from the top of the session. This is very close to the way I would have laid these books out in a printed catalog – with some visual box/background to set them apart and make them easy to find for people who are looking for them – and to try to catch the eye of people looking over and browsing by conveying quickly something what they are.

So now, if you know you’re going to be studying the middle ages and you want to find some coloring books for your younger children – click on the Middle Ages category in the left-hand column and you’ll see this:

greenleaf_midagesAnd now, click on the link to Coloring Books, either in the text in the center column or in the categories list in the left-hand column (now that you’ve clicked on Middle Ages, the categories list displays all of the sub-categories).

This reorganization of the e-store has taken several long days to implement (and there is still a bit of tidying up to do) – not unlike re-arranging a physical store! The goal is to make it easier or you to find the books you are looking forward.

Feedback and comments welcome! Thanks to everyone who has shopped at Greenleaf over the past several years. Your purchases are what makes it possible for Cyndy and  me to continue to write new books to help parents teach history and literature to their children!

- Rob Shearer, Publisher

PS: Check out some of our other category sections below the chronological coverage of the major historical epochs, like our collection of Biography Series (Landmarks, Childhood of Famous Americans, and Mike Venezia’s Artists, Composers, & Presidents), DK Eyewitness Books, and the Politically Incorrect Guides.

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Greenleaf Press History Scope & Sequence

August 4, 2009 in Ancient history, Bible, book reviews, children's books, Homeschooling, Middle Ages, Modern History by admin | No comments

With the imminent publication of Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century, I decided to review, revise, & update the Greenleaf scope and sequence for the study of history.

After 20 years of teaching history, talking to homeschooling parents, and continuing to read and write on historical topics, I am more convinced than ever that the keys to teaching history to children are Chronology and Biography.

And I am also equally convinced that we need to be teaching the Bible to our children as a historical document. The Bible is not a collection of morality tales like Aesop’s Fables. The Bible is a historical account of God acting in history from the call of the Patriarchs through the Exodus, the Conquest, the Exile and the Restoration. I believe strongly that our kids should know the history of Israel as their first “model” for how to approach history. And the Bible’s pattern is to tell the story in chronological order and to focus on one key person at a time. The historical books of the Bible tell the story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, etc… down to Daniel, Esther, Ezra, & Nehemiah.

With the new Famous Men book (and with a few excellent books from other publishers), Greenleaf is able to offer a complete history program for grades 1-8, and a plan for a second study of western civilization in the high school years.

You can download our 3-page Scope and Sequence here. Feel free to copy, forward, and/or print out as many copies as you’d like.

Page One is the plan for the elementary grades.

Page two is the plan for high school students:

And page three are alternate plans to do Western Civilization in four, five, six, or seven years of elementary school:

I’ll have more information about the imminent publication of Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century over the next few weeks.

- Rob Shearer, Publisher

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Charles II – Good Time Charlie

July 24, 2009 in book reviews, children's books by admin | 1 comment

1630-charles-04When he was 16, he had to flee England when the Puritans defeated and captured his father, King Charles I. His father was executed when he was 19 as he was trying desperately to organize an army to invade England and rescue him. He made promises to the Scots Covenanters that he had no intention of keeping in hopes of regaining his throne with a Scottish Army. Cromwell crushed his army at Worcester in 1651 and he had to flee for his life. He spent six weeks on the run, with a price on his head, often disguised as a servant or a groom. He and his friends tried to find a ship for France at three different ports and had dozens of narrow escapes before he was able to escape back to France.

He spent nine years in exile. The French signed a treaty with Cromwell and he had to flee to Cologne, Germany. He and his closest advisors were without funds and often went without food.

And then, in the ninth year of his exile Cromwell died and the Republic in England fumbled between Generals and Parliament over who his successor should be. Finally, the Governor of Scotland, General Monck had enough and marched to London, presided over the election of a pro-royalist Convention Parliament, and Charles was restored to his throne.

I’m about 2/3 of the way into the bio of Good Time Charley – a nickname perhaps he earned, though it is not completely fair to him. Still, he  had at least a dozen illegitimate children by seven mistresses, but no legitimate children.

Cromwell and the Puritans had closed the theaters in London. Charles and the Cavaliers reopened them (Cakes and ale for all!) and some very funny Restoration Drama was the result.

One of his friends composed the following bit of doggerel for him:

God bless our good and gracious king,
Whose promise none relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.

To which Charles is reputed to have replied:

“That is true; for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers.”

On the home stretch for Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century. I have three more chapters to finished and three to edit.

Onward. . .

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Good Times Travel Agency and Kids Can Read

July 21, 2009 in book reviews, children's books by admin | 2 comments

With of the contraction in the book publishing world, it’s refreshing to “find” a persevering publisher with a number of very nice titles.

Kids Can Press is a Canadian publishing firm, founded in 1973 and headquartered in Toronto.

They have two series of children’s historical books that I find delightful.

Over the past six or seven years, they have produced six titles in a series titled the “Good Times Travel Agency.” I’m going to limit my review to the five that cover documented historical periods. They have a title, Adventures in the Ice Age that, chronologically speaking would come first – but it’s entirely a work of speculative imagination since there are no written records from anyone who lived during the Ice Age (or the Stone Age for that matter). My advice: if you’re teaching kids history, stick to history. Pre-history is, by definition, NOT history. It may be imaginative, but it’s not history.

So here are the five titles in the series:

Each of these is an 8.5″ x 11″ 48 page four-color romp through a particular time-period as we follow the adventures of the three Binkertons, Josh, Emma, and Libby. They KEEP returning to the Good Times Travel Agency, where one guide book after another magically transports them to a historical time and place. The guide book must be read to the end (every word) before the children can return – which is a clever way to get young readers to read the text that goes along with the adventures depicted in the humorous illustrations. In Egypt, Josh gets drafted into the corvee of workers who are helping to build Pharaohs pyramid. In the Middle Ages, he is first mistaken for a fool, taken to the castle, assigned to the kitchen (when he doesn’t prove very funny) and finally transferred to the stables. Each of the five books manages to provide an interesting story, the illustrations have lots of detail that conveys interesting tidbits, and the historical information presented is factual, reliable and non-politically correct.

Here are some sample spreads:

I’m REALLY hoping that Bailey and Slavin will add an Adventures in Ancient Rome to this series, but these five already are a great resource for families studying topics in world history in grades 4 to 6.

Greece, China, and the Middle Ages are $8.95. Ancient Egypt and the Vikings are $9.95. All can be ordered directly from Greenleaf Press by clicking on any of the links or book covers in this message.

The second series from Kids Can Press is their Kids Can Read series. In level 3 of that series, KCP has released eight short biographies for beginning readers. Many of these names will be familiar to most parents but for several KCP offers the ONLY biography in print for young readers. I think that KCP is the ONLY publisher currently offering children’s biographies of Samuel de Champlain (the French explorer who founded Quebec in 1608) and Lucy Maud Montgomery (the author of Anne of Green Gables). Each of these is 6″ x 9″, 32 pages, and four-color on all pages.

I really like both of the illustrators’ styles on these (John Mantha and Andrej C), and the story telling (by Elizabeth MacLeod) is very well done. These are perfect as first chapter books or practice chapter books for students in second and third grade.




Each of these is $3.95, and can be purchased directly from Greenleaf Press by clicking on the links or book cover images in this message.

- Rob Shearer, Publisher

www.greenleafpress.com

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John Winthrop – American Nehemiah

July 9, 2009 in book reviews, children's books, Colonial Period, English History by admin | No comments

winthropI’ve just finished drafting a short biography of John Winthrop for my next book, Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century. The biographies begin with Queen Elizabeth and will end with the death of Louis XIV in 1715.

This has been a difficult chapter for me to write, and taken longer than I expected. I have developed an admiration for Winthrop, even if I have not been able to muster a great deal of affection. If I had known him, I might have liked him – but on the whole he seems to have had a very serious bent. Luther did too, but Luther had a playful, mischievous side to him that I greatly appreciate. I can find no hint of mischief in all of Winthrop’s writings.

Still, he is a man to be admired.

Part of the difficulty in writing about him is having to explain the culture and institutions within whose bounds he operated. He is an Englishman of the 1600s. Further, he is Puritan in his religious convictions. Further, he is from a moderately well-off, connected family from the Stour Valley in Suffolk. And he was a lawyer. I hope you get my drift.

Reasons to admire him? There are many.

His family – when he died, he had six surviving sons. The oldest was 48, the youngest barely a year old. Winthrop was widowed three times, twice before he was 30. He and his third wife were married for 29 years and had raised four sons together when she died. Winthrop, a widower at 59, married for a fourth time, and had a son who was just a year old when he died.

His leadership / perseverance – He joined the Puritan company who were planning to plant a colony in the new world in 1629 and was almost immediately elected governor. He organized a fleet of 11 ships and 700 colonists who sailed for Massachusetts just six months later.

His moderation – As governor he sought to reconcile embittered parties who came before him with legal disputes. He knew what a great freedom the Puritans had achieved by being granted a charter that allowed the colony to govern itself – without a royal, appointed governor.

His resolve – The life of the colonists was harsh, and challenging. Mortality was quite high – over 50% for many years. Threatened by disease, starvation, Indian attacks, and on occasion by internal quarrels, Winthrop persevered in seeing the colony grow and prosper. It had a population of over 15,000 when he died in 1649 – nineteen years after the first 700 had crossed the Atlantic in the Winthrop fleet.

Some may think the cases of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson are damaging to Winthrop’s reputation, but the original sources do not reflect badly on him. I would argue that Williams’ banishment from Massachusetts was not so harsh as later historians wish to portray it. In fact, after settling in Rhode Island, Williams and Winthrop maintained a friendly correspondence and sent each other gifts from time to time.

Anne Hutchinson is another matter altogether. I believe that the popular story of Hutchinson as an early feminist and a martyr for toleration and religious freedom can only be described as a great historical fraud. She has been adopted by those pursuing modern ideologies for their own reasons. In the record, it is clear that she was as intolerant (if not more so) as the Puritans of Boston. She was, in fact, agitating and organizing a faction in the church at Boston in an attempt to have one of the ministers dismissed and her brother-in-law appointed in his place. She claimed to know “by direct revelation of the Holy Spirit” who were truly elect and who were not. She charged that only Rev. Cotton and Rev. Wheelwright (her brother-in-law) were true ministers of the gospel and that all the other ministers of Massachusetts were preaching a false “covenant of works.” Had she succeeded, she would have gladly seen Winthrop banished from the colony.

Well.. chapter 18 is now drafted. The page count stands at 163. I have to finnish finding illustrations for these last few chapters. I have seven more to draft myself, and three to edit from the original Famous Men of Modern Times. Time to push on. . .

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An Update on Greenleaf Press projects

June 10, 2009 in book reviews, children's books by admin | No comments

It’s been a busy year! And it’s only June!

It occurred to me that I should take a minute and update friends & gentle readers on what’s been going on at Greenleaf Press. A lot, actually. I forget, in the day-to-day press of the urgent some of the significant things that we have accomplished. Here’s a quick review:


Last summer saw the re-launch of Valerie Bendt’s Reading Made Easy and the publication of Cyndy Shearer’s Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature.

This year, Greenleaf has released three new titles and we have several more exciting projects under development.

 In March we released Handwriting by George Volume 2.

In April we released Voices of the Renaissance and Reformation.

In May we released The Sayings of Mrs. Solomon.

Projects under development:
Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century – I am happy to report that there are now twelve chapters written, out of a projected 28. Here’s the current, working version of the Table of Contents:

Introduction

  1. Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589)
  2. Henry of Navarre (1553-1610)
  3. Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
  4. Sir Francis Drake (1540-1595)
  5. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)
  6. James I (1566-1625)
  7. Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)
  8. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
  9. John Smith (1580-1631)
  10. Wallenstein (1583-1634)
  11. Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632)
  12. Samuel de Champlain (1570-1635)

Galileo (1564-1642)

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642)

Charles I (1600-1649)

William Bradford (1590-1657)

John Winthrop (1588-1649) combine with Bradford?

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) may be too much overlap with Charles I?

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Rembrandt (1606-1669)

John Milton (1608-1674)

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)

Charles II (1630-1685)

Jan Sobieski (1629-1696)

William of Orange (1650-1702)

John Locke (1632-1704)

Johan Pachelbel (1653-1706)

Louis XIV (1638-1715)

When this project is finished, I plan to continue the series with the next volumes, Famous Men of the 18th Century, Famous Men of the 19th Century, and Famous Men of the 20th Century. I’m already looking forward to doing the chapters on Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II!

Handwriting by George, volumes 3 & 4 should be ready to go to the printer shortly. When all four volumes are out, we will have covered all 100 of George Washington’s maxims. Volumes 1 & 2 included the first 55.

Cyndy is working on editing the text of Alfred Church’s The Odyssey for Boys and Girls, which will join her wonderful edition of Church’s The Iliad for Boys and Girls (Greenleaf title: The Story of the Iliad) which we published in 2004. She is also working on the next volume in her high school inductive literature guides, The Greenleaf Guide to Early Modern Literature. We don’t have firm dates yet, but Cyndy’s high school guides are based on ten years teaching in local tutorial and co-op programs. The Ancient Lit and Medieval Lit guides are what she uses for her 9th grade and 10th grade classes. The Early Modern Guide and 20th Century Guide already exist and she’s been teaching these classes at the Schaeffer Study Center for the past six years. But she won’t let me publish them until she’s revised them to her satisfaction!

As always, we continue to scour the publisher’s catalogs to find the best children’s books published each year. The outstanding selection this year, so far, would have to be Pharaoh’s Boat. I can’t say enough good things about this book. Full review is still on the blog.

To get the latest reviews of new books and news about projects, got to the Greenleaf Press website and sign up for the Greenleaf newsletter by clicking on “Store” and logging yourself in (if you don’t have an account, you can create one). In the right-hand column, there is a green box titled “My Account.” It’s the third one from the top. Click on the My Account link in the box and you can subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the newsletter.

- Rob Shearer
(Publisher, Editor, sometime writer, husband & dad – not necessarily in that order!)

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New books for the bedside table

May 28, 2009 in book reviews, children's books by admin | No comments

Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches

Lucas Cranach the Elder: Art and Devotion of the German Reformation

The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations

Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan

Gotta love summertime reading lists – but first, I have to finish this:

Champlain’s Dream

which is a magnificent book. It’s 500 pages of narrative, 100 pages of appendices, and 200 pages of footnotes! The author is a brilliant writer. What has stood out for me though the book (I’m on about page 400) is the proximity in time and space of the French efforts with the English efforts – both somewhat belated attempts to find a foothold in the New World after a century of Spanish colonization. The French founded Port Royal in 1605, two years before Jamestown (although it was not continuously inhabited until after 1632) and Quebec in 1608, the year after. Also quite surprising was how small and precarious the French colonies were. The had fewer than 50 permanent residents for many years and only a few families. More on this later, when I’ve finished reading and draft a short bio of Champlain for the Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century.

- Rob Shearer

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Pharaoh’s Boat

May 5, 2009 in Ancient history, book reviews, children's books by admin | No comments

The importance of understanding Egyptian history and culture can hardly be over-estimated. Egypt is the country mentioned most often in the Old Testament. Israel’s prophets foretell the future not just for Israel, but for Egypt as well.

Abraham had dealings with Pharaoh, as did Jacob and Joseph. The founding of Israel as a nation is rooted in Moses’ struggle with Pharaoh. The kings of Israel & Judah wrestled with Egypt as a regional power and puzzled over whether to treat her as an ally or an enemy. Jeremiah goes into exile in Egypt rather than Babylon, where he loses his life. Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod.

In Roman history, it was Egypt which played a crucial role in the lives and fortunes of Julius Caesar and his nephew Octavian, better known as Caesar Augustus.

For all of these reasons, we have always made the study of Ancient Egypt a key part of our children’s introduction to history. It is a tremendous aid in understanding the Old Testament – and a study of the Ancient World which only touched the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome leaves much of ancient culture incomprehensible.

Among other things, Egypt is the archetypal example of the determining influence of geography on history. Ancient Egypt is really the civilization developed by a string of towns and villages up and down the Nile River – like pearls on a rope. The entire civilization is a narrow corridor, only a few miles wide on either side of the Nile. There is a sharp delineation between the green fertile fields, irrigated by the annual Nile flood and the desolate sands of the uninhabited desert, which begins within sight of the Nile.

So Pharaoh’s Boat (just published by Houghton Mifflin in May, 2009) is not a plaything or a diverting bit of aquatic recreation. The Nile is central to the existence of Egypt. Egyptians worship the Nile as the giver of life. One of Pharaoh’s most sacred duties was to intercede with the gods on behalf of Egypt to insure the annual flood which irrigates the fields on either side of the long valley. Cheops and the Great Pyramid of Giza which formed his tomb belong to the earliest period in Egyptian history. Perhaps as early as 2600 BC, in the Old Kingdom of Egypt 100,000 workers labored for 20 years to build a stone pyramid over 400 feet tall.

The first part of this delightful book tells the ancient story of how and why a boat was built for Cheops and buried in a pit on the river side of the Great Pyramid. The author and illustrator, David Weitzman, uses the flat 2-dimensional style of ancient Egyptian wall paintings to show/explain why boats were so important to the ancient Egyptians and to show the steps which were taken to build and bury two boats for Pharaoh Cheops. The twist is that the boats, after being designed and built by an ancient shipwright, were disassembled and the pieces placed in an orderly layered arrangement in the pits.

To tell the story of their discovery and re-assembly, Weitzman switches to a more modern 3-dimensional representational style. The story of the painstaking research that went into re-assembling the boat is as fascinating as the story of their original construction. It was a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with 1,200+ pieces, and no pictures or instructions. Before the Egyptian archeologist, Ahmed Youssef Moustafa, chief of the Restoration Department of the Egyptian Antiquities Service was satisfied, the boat had been put together and taken apart five times. Each time, the team of archeologists learned something new. To solve several particularly difficult problems, Ahmed went to modern Egyptian boat-makers on the banks of the Nile and served as an apprentice, asking questions about the details of the techniques they used. It turns out that many things have stayed the same for over 4,000 years.

This book is a masterpiece. Although the publisher says that the target audience is children ages 9-12, my estimate is that students up through middle school will find the book quite interesting.

The book carries an endorsement by David Macaulay (and makes a great companion to his book, Pyramid):

“Pharaoh’s Boat is an immensely gratifying book as skillfully crafted and assembled as its subject. In this beautifully written and illustrated account, David Weitzman weaves past and present into a truly satisfying story of technology and discovery, scholarship and craft. While much of the art is done in the familiarly flat Egyptian style, the journey on which it take us is absolutely four dimensional.”

Pharaoh’s Boat is a hardback, 32 pages. It is available directly from Greenleaf Press for $18.00 by clicking on any of the links in this review.

- Rob Shearer, Publisher

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Revels and Shenanigans

April 27, 2009 in book reviews, children's books, Colonial Period, Middle Ages by admin | No comments

Come to the Castle, by Linda Ashman, illuminated by S.D. Schindler

Tricking the Tallyman, by Jacqueline Davies, illustrated by S.D. Schindler

These two books have at least two things in common. They were both published in 2009, and they were both illustrated (illuminated) by S.D. Schindler. They’re also both entertaining and educational, each with its own wry, quirky sense of humor.

Come to the Castle is subtitled, “A Visit to a Castle in Thirteenth-Century England.” Too often, the authors of children’s books succumb to the temptation to romanticize the middle ages. This book is decidedly realistic (if not downright un-romantic). This is not a dry reference book, but rather begins as a rhymed tale of the Earl of Daftwood and his plan to relieve his tedium with a bit of merriment – a tournament!

Steward, plan a tournament!
Herald, find your horse!

This is the opportunity to introduce the many different servants who serve the Earl of Daftwood. Here is the Steward’s response:

Steward, plan a tournament?!
The Earl is surely daft!
Though he has countless servants,
I am vastly understaffed,
Overworked, and truly weary
Of his constant recreation
(Oh, how I’d love a nice massage
And several weeks’ vacation!).

As plans for the party progress, we are introduced to the Herald, the Lady, the Cook, the Cleaning Servant, the Gong Farmer, the Knight, the Squire, the Suitor, the Earl’s Daughter, the Jester, and the Doctor. Each of these has his or her own unique perspective on the role they play in the life of the castle and what a great feast will mean for them. The details are well researched – the author consulted several medieval historians to get all the details right. Schindler’s illustrations are delightfully detailed and entertaining. In addition to illuminated letters on each page, there are numerous small touches tucked away into nooks and corners that provide a rich visual picture of medieval life.

The publisher indicates that the text is pitched for ages 4-8, but older students up through 10 or so will also enjoy the story. This would definitely make a great read-aloud for a child sitting in a lap and gazing at the pictures.

Come to the Castle is a hardback, 40 pages and available directly from Greenleaf Press for $17.95

Tricking the Tallyman is subtitled, The Great Census Shenanigans of 1790. It is 1790, the year of the very first U.S. Census. Phineas Bump, Assistant Marshal of the United States rides into the Vermont town of Tunbridge in order to get an accurate count for the census. But a rumor has preceded him that the purpose of the census is to assess taxes and that the more people he counts, the more money the town will have to pay in taxes. The town resolves to trick the Tallyman. Phineas is told that most of the buildings in town are abandoned. He suspects he’s being tricked, but posts his results in the town square.

The townspeople now learn that the purpose of the census is to determine how many votes Vermont should have in the new Congress. More votes would mean a better chance for a road and a post office. The townspeople ask for a recount – and attempt to trick the Tallyman yet again. Everyone gets counted twice, at least!

Phineas posts the new results, grumbles “Tis a tally not worth the paper it is written on.”

Finally the townspeople figure out the truth: the census is for taxes AND for representation in the new Congress. Phineas is persuaded to count one more time.

“We’re the town that tricked the Tallyman – twice! But then, we decided ’twas better to be fair and true. And so we were. Entirely.”

The author’s note at the end includes the six questions asked at each household during the first US Census. 650 assistant marshals were employed by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State to President George Washington to determine the official population of each of the states.

Once again, Schindler’s illustrations are delightful. They show us what life in a small town in the Vermont woods looked like in the 1790s. The family scenes and facial expressions are delightful. One learns a lot about colonial life just by looking at the clothes, the houses, the furniture, the toys, and especially the town scenes.

Tricking the Tallyman is also targeted to children, ages 5-8, but like Come to the Castle, the story will be interesting for students up through age 10-12. Since next year (2010) is a census year, this book is very timely, and could be used as part of a study on US History and the US Congress. Should the number of congressman from your state change? How will we know? How will the government find out?

Tricking the Tallyman is a hardback, 40 pages and available from Greenleaf Press for $17.99

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