Review of History's Witches: An Illustrated Guide by Lisa Graves
Graves' attempts to make history fun for a target audience of middle-school aged children, namely the 9-12 year old set. I can appreciate this goal, so many people shy away from non-fiction history books because they are perceived as dry and boring, certainly some of them can be. The guide covers thirteen women from history with a two page spread high in graphics, much like a children's picture book.
Unfortanelty the information covered is about as scant as the words found in a children's picture book. For the target audience, I felt more information could be provided while still providing a fun, visually appealing history of these famous women from history. The guide could be used as a starting point for selecting one of these individuals to do a more in-depth report on, giving you a name, time period and a little bio information on who the person was. The inclusion of keywords pertaining to the individual was nice and could be used as a point of further discussion as well. Within the text I would wonder at some of the word choices, heresy was used but not defined, but familiars were explained as the magical animals used by witches. I could be wrong, but I'm thinking more in this age group would have an understanding of the word familiars over heresy.
Graves' attempts to make history fun for a target audience of middle-school aged children, namely the 9-12 year old set. I can appreciate this goal, so many people shy away from non-fiction history books because they are perceived as dry and boring, certainly some of them can be. The guide covers thirteen women from history with a two page spread high in graphics, much like a children's picture book.
Unfortanelty the information covered is about as scant as the words found in a children's picture book. For the target audience, I felt more information could be provided while still providing a fun, visually appealing history of these famous women from history. The guide could be used as a starting point for selecting one of these individuals to do a more in-depth report on, giving you a name, time period and a little bio information on who the person was. The inclusion of keywords pertaining to the individual was nice and could be used as a point of further discussion as well. Within the text I would wonder at some of the word choices, heresy was used but not defined, but familiars were explained as the magical animals used by witches. I could be wrong, but I'm thinking more in this age group would have an understanding of the word familiars over heresy.
In fairness, at the end of the book Graves does recommend four books for continued reading and provides four website links for further information. If someone wanted to use for a younger crowd, I would recommend the parent quickly do a read, just to ensure they won't have any objections to the way hangings and people being burned at the stake is presented. Nothing you should be surprised by when tackling the subject of accused witches, and details are not graphic, just mentioned as a matter of fact. Title: History's Witches: An Illustrated Guide Author: Lisa Graves Publisher: Xist Publishing (2013) Source: Public Library (Library2Go) Format Read: Kindle: ASIN B00EA3L2UA |
Genres/Subjects: Non-Fiction, Juvenile, History, Witchcraft Trials
[Notice: Original posting 2014-03-14 at Plethora of Books Blog: http://bookchallenges.weebly.com]
Tags: 2014, History, Non-Fiction
[Notice: Original posting 2014-03-14 at Plethora of Books Blog: http://bookchallenges.weebly.com]
Tags: 2014, History, Non-Fiction