A Child's First Book of American History

I preordered the BF book, but they have not yet shipped out. I hope to have it soon! From what I understand it was republished but not revised by BF … so the text remains the same but I think they preserved the illustrations and such.

Heather, 

The chapters are short, 4-8 pages in length with fabulous drawings by Daugherty. The writing is fairly simple with short sentences, appropriate 1st+ and accessible to be read independently by 4th or 5th grade level. There are 50 chapters and 300+ pages. Many pages have large pictures. 

Contents

1. They never tasted dew so sweet (Leif Ericson)
2. The light (columbus)
3. The troublesome corpse (the quest for the 7 cities)
4. cradle of our liberties (Founding of Jamestown)
5. …
6. ch. 48 – War is a contagion (pearl harbor)
7. ch. 49 – operation overlord (we land on normandy beach)
8. ch. 50 – the lone plane – (birth of the atomic age, 1945)

Here is a snippet from Ch. 4 “Cradle of Our Liberties”

The Founding of Jamestown, 1607

For a long time England had cast covetous eyes at North America. In 1497 King Henry VII sponsored the voyage of John and Sebastian Cabot to establish a claim in the new lands, but not until England defeated the Soanish Armada could serious attemps of colonization be tried. 

Both failure and discouragement marked the first British efforts. Sir Humphrey Gilbert lost his life while returning in 1583 from an attempted colonization in Newfoundland. Two years later the second of two expeditions sent out by Sir WalterRaleigh landed on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. Here Virginia Dare became the first white child to be born on the soil of North America, and then Virginia vanished – a part of the baffling mystery still surrounding the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke. Strange inscriptions found at the site of the Roanoke settlementsuggest that the colonists went to live with the Cratian Indians. Did they go willingly? Did they wander off into the wilderness with the Indians or were they murdered? No one ever has known.

Hope that helps. I’m debating how to use it. 

Christie

Just bumping for csmamma

Bump. Anyone?

So it’s decent? What ages would you use it for, Christie?

We’ve been reading it as a quasi spine for our US history – we like it 🙂 I don’t have any earth shattering reviews – the illustrations are big which appeals to my boys. The chapters are a good length for a short read-aloud. We are reading other books too in between chapters. I haven’t decided if I would have rather just read straight through it first and then gone back through a second time with other books (like I did with Hillyer’s Child’s history of the world)