[Editor’s note: Our friend Michael Elliot sends along the following request for help. And yes, at some point I really should respond to the Wilentz essay linked below. You know what else I really should do? Post a review of Nixonland.]
Like any self-respecting parent, my main goal is to indoctrinate educate my children so that they can share my own nuanced take on the world. My second goal is to avoid having to read the insipid dreck that passes for children’s literature at bedtime. For these reasons, I’m looking to pick up some books that will shove my five-year-old down the path toward becoming an American historian. (After reading Sean Wilentz, God knows I don’t want him to become a literary scholar.) So, any recommendations on books about U.S. history for the kindergarten set?
For the record, I’ve recently tried out a couple of short picture-books on Lincoln. My son was intrigued, but unfortunately found the assassination “too sad.” As Ari says, “What self-respecting five-year-old wants to be depressed?” Ari mistakes me for a parent who values his kid’s self-respect above his own.
The Edge of the American West 
68 comments
August 12, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Dan Miller
They’re fictional, but I loved the Great Brain books growing up, about a family living in Utah in the 1890s. Can’t go wrong.
August 12, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Ahistoricality
Great Brain is a bit much for a five-year old, I think, but that’s about the age we started the Little Anachronism on the Little House books, which are nothing whatsoever like the tv show. (And if it works, you’re set for months)
History as such hasn’t been all that popular with our child, though books about how things used to work certainly can hold attention for a while.
Couple of months back, walking back from the donut shop, the L.A. looks up at me and asks “What was World War one and World War two about?” I finished ’em both before we got home, too.
August 12, 2009 at 12:24 pm
JRoth
Bonnie Christensen’s Woody Guthrie bio places him nicely in his historical milieu. Of course, his mother and sister die, plus he gets Hodgkin’s at the end, so not exactly cheering. Still, gorgeous illustration and a frankly, if subtly, lefty tilt.
Jonah Winter (full disclosure: personal friend) writes very clever children’s books, mostly biographical, but with lots of historical context. He’s done Muhammed Ali, Benny Goodman, Roberto Clemente, Dizzy Gillespie, Gertrude Stein, and others, plus Steeltown, which is kind of a poetic piece about a day in the life in a milltown ca. 1930.
Then there’s the Little House books, which of course some find intolerable. YMMV.
August 12, 2009 at 12:24 pm
rja
I’m mostly trying to indoctrinate my five-year-old to be an art historian, so I’m probably not too helpful. But, Susan Goldman Rubin’s Haym Salomon: American Patriot is a possibility. It’s definitely flawed, but you can tear it apart grad seminar-style. That’s what we do anyway.
August 12, 2009 at 12:25 pm
JRoth
“What was World War one and World War two about?”
“Fighting off the Filthy Hun, sweetie. Another crueller?”
August 12, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Levi Stahl
Definitely second–third?–the Great Brain recommendation. I think I was about seven when I first read them, though I was probably a bit young. They’ve stuck with me in detail for decades.
I also read a lot of baseball history and old baseball novels for kids, which incidentally taught me a lot of history: John R. Tunis’s baseball books, for example.
I remember loving Across Five Aprils, though 1) I think it’s surely for kids ten and up and 2) I don’t remember it in any detail, so it might be awful.
August 12, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Michael Elliott
These are all great suggestions. I had forgotten about the Great Brain, though I think he’s probably a little young for that just yet. (He likes an illustration every page or two still.) But it will be on the shelf for later.
My wife actually started Little House with him the other night. For reasons that I don’t understand, this means that I don’t get to read it to him because it’s “hers.” Recriminations are possible.
And I would be very happy with an art historian. As I understand Wilentz, it’s only the English department that’s the problem.
August 12, 2009 at 12:55 pm
serial catowner
By chance, one springs to mind- Behemoth: The Story of Power, Eric Hodgins and Alexander Magoun, Junior Literary Guild, 1932- and one is available at Abebooks for $3.86.
Quite ‘accessible’ for children and still not boring for you either. Lots of good discussion matter in the ‘what happened next’ department.
August 12, 2009 at 1:03 pm
teofilo
The d’Aulaires did picture-book biographies of Washington and Lincoln that are short and accessible with great pictures. The Lincoln one doesn’t include the assassination.
August 12, 2009 at 1:21 pm
TF Smith
The David Macaulay series (“Castle” “Cathedral” etc.) focus on architecture, but have a nice leaven of history and are beautifully illustrated.
Caldecott and Newbery winners are – generally – safe choices; some of the older ones are reflective of their times with regards to ethnic and gender stereotypes, however.
August 12, 2009 at 1:58 pm
dana
When I was small I had a book about Benjamin Franklin that I adored. It was small, it had black and white illustrations, and I can’t remember the title, but it was great because it included the fun details about his life before inventing everything including America. Like trying to devise a way for a kite to pull him across a lake so he could return home after a swim.
Which is to say, I’d look at biographies aimed at the elementary school set. Not that I know what those are. I also had one about the great San Francisco earthquake. (Looters had to wear signs that said “I am a junk thief”! Not sure what else happened. Fires.)
August 12, 2009 at 2:01 pm
eric
Depends very much on the five year old, of course, but:
On This Spot
Our Family Tree
The Magic Tree House series.
And, believe it or not, we found this quite good.
August 12, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Buster
OK, I have no sense of what is age-appropriate for a five-year-old or good US history books for this set. But this post strikes me as a chance to download some useless information about children’s literature banging around in my skull, gathered during one of my youthful periods of unemployment when I sat in the public library all day long. One week, I got really interested in ethnic children’s literature. Most of it aims at older juvenile markets, but you may want to look at the Caldecott-winning work of Taro Yashima (*Crow Boy* comes to mind, though it may be for kids younger than five?), and you can read the new scholarly imprint of his *New Sun* at the same time. Also, Dhan Gopal Mukerji (won the Newberry) did some amazing stories about man, nature, India, etc. that are infused with his interpretation of Vedanta philosophy (sans prosthelytizing). His best is *Gay Neck: The Story of a Pigeon*–definitely for older kids. *Kari the Elephant* or *Ghond the Hunter* may work better. Top of my list in terms of interesting, and absolutely the LEAST helpful suggestion I can give: pan-Africanist historian Walter Rodney (most famous for *How Europe Underdeveloped Africa*) wrote a series of historical stories for Indo- and Afro-Guyanese children; they remain unpublished but are available in his papers in an archive in Atlanta. (Obviously, this last one wasn’t read while unemployed in the library, unless that is how you categorize grad school life on the whole–a favored interpretation in my family.)
August 12, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Vance
Thanks all, particularly Eric — this is a live question for me, and I don’t have any good ideas.
And I know it’s stupid to pick on typos, but “prosthelytizing” is awesome: something like fitting a substitute faith to someone who’s lost their own — filling the “god-shaped hole”.
August 12, 2009 at 2:48 pm
kathy a.
my kids are now 20 and 22, so this recommendation is very dated — but back when, we had a large collection of “eyewitness books” on all kinds of subjects: animals, music, history. here is their current set of offerings on history for ages 5-8: http://us.dk.com/nf/Browse/BrowseStdPage/0,,233458,00.html
i don’t think they have as large an offering for younger kids now, but you might find some used. amazon seems to have a lot of older titles.
we loved these books because they had fabulous graphics and photos, plus enough information to engage without being overwhelming. the kids used them for years, going back to read them themselves, and the snippets of info sparked their interest in more detailed information later.
August 12, 2009 at 2:53 pm
JPool
Maybe if you just read him literature translated from other languages he can end up in a nice respectable Comparative Literature department.
I thought Wilentz’s problem was with English Department people (Englicians?) who try to do history, what with their pathetic attempts to analyze sources and present arguments and engage with the secondary literature. Historians have known for years that such people are not to be trusted. If they would just stick to their knitting and/or pretendy books, then we wouldn’t have to think about them.
August 12, 2009 at 3:22 pm
serofriend
I grew fond of Ben and Me as a child.
August 12, 2009 at 3:27 pm
serofriend
Sorry, hitting and missing with these hyperlinks.
August 12, 2009 at 3:36 pm
serofriend
I also enjoyed Elizabeth Speare’s Sign of the Beaver. Before purchasing it as a Holidays gift, I read Christopher Curtis’s excellent Watsons Go To Birmingham.
August 12, 2009 at 4:31 pm
bitchphd
Little House seconded, especially if you are able/willing to talk a little bit about things like oh, say, the situation vis-a-vis Indians when it comes up. There’s also Erdrich’s Birchbark House as a possible companion, although it isn’t free of depressing material–after all, how could it be?
I don’t know if someone has mentioned the Lawson books upthread–probably they have–but if not, things like Ben and Me and Mr. Revere and I aren’t too old to read to a five-year old imho.
There are a lot of good books for that age that do historical biography, obvs. I remember PK learning a fair bit about Harriet Tubman at that age; we were in Canada, and she’s seen as a Canadian history figure there. The Coretta Scott King award is good for picture books on A-A history. The thing we ran into in first grade, though, is that schools teach A-A history in February with the usual focus on MLK and what slavery was, and PK–being anglo–said he “felt kinda guilty” about it. That, plus the Anti-Bias Curriculum Handbook‘s recommendation that white parents make sure their kids have examples of white people who fought racism as well as blacks who did so led me to look for kid’s picture books about white abolitionists, which are a little harder to find. Enemies of Slavery is a good one; one-page bios of abolitionists white and black, which gives kind of a nice sense of the breadth of opposition.
There’s tons of good historic fiction for older kids, of course, mostly in the Newberry category. But it can be tough to find good historical stuff for the younger kids that isn’t either dry or irritatingly preachy, and the older stuff is, as you say, depressing. If you’re willing to talk about the historical context of stuff, though, it’s pretty easy to make picture books about art or music into discussions of history. Chris Raschka has some great jazz picture books. Oh, and Ox, House, Stick is a history of the alphabet that PK absolutely adored. There’s plenty of Greek and Roman myth stuff, too, which isn’t “American history,” but definitely gets kids interested in history as a topic.
Finally, I actually had some really good luck just going onto Amazon and doing some random puttering. There are listmania lists for about every possible subject. “Multi-cultural” stuff for kids tends to be especially rich in history-based picture books, for obvious reasons, e.g.
August 12, 2009 at 4:33 pm
bitchphd
All that said, Ari *still* hasn’t gotten back to me about *my* request for a recommended historical atlas for kids. Hmph.
August 12, 2009 at 4:38 pm
serofriend
aren’t too old to read to a five-year old
My parents read many of the books to me as a 5 or 6 year-old that I wold go on to read myself a couple of years later.
August 12, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Sybil Vane
As I understand Wilentz, it’s only the English department that’s the problem.
Surely this is more widely sourced that Wilentz.
August 12, 2009 at 4:48 pm
ari
All that said, Ari *still* hasn’t gotten back to me about *my* request for a recommended historical atlas for kids. Hmph.
If I didn’t so relish the thought of PK, lost and wandering, his mama at home cursing herself for not having been a bit more of a self-starter, I might make finding him some maps a higher priority.
August 12, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Michael Elliott
There’s a lot of great stuff here, and thanks to y’all. Speaking to Bitch’s point about the teaching of Af-Am history in the schools I am, well, very curious to see how this plays out in Atlanta. In fact, I’ve been learning about the power of the state standards for history and social sciences — not just what they are but how powerful they are in governing the management of public history. Anyhow, I’ve made a nice list from the suggestions thus far, and appreciate this.
As for the poor PK, wandering around map-less. Shouldn’t you take pity on him, Ari, since his mother (a lit scholar) had the good sense to consult the authority of a historian? WWSWD?
August 12, 2009 at 6:10 pm
TF Smith
A little much for a 5-year-old, but otherwise an excellent choice for young people with an interest in history are Larry Gonick’s “Cartoon History” series…I’ve read some undergrad world history papers that would benefit from a read of Gonick.
Dr. B – PK might enjoy the “Ultimate Atlas of Almost Everything” from Sterling Publishing, which includses political/topographic maps and a lot of historical maps as well. Another possibility you might find in used book store, friends of the library, or on-line is one of the coffee table sized Rand McNally Cosmopolitan from the mid-60s; along with the political/topo maps, mine has a historical section and a “gazeteer” that introduced me to everything from the ABC Countries and Aegospotami to Zoar and Zululand…
August 12, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Charlieford
MAUS
August 12, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Michael Elliott
Maus at age 5?
August 12, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Levi Stahl
That’s hardcore, man. Hard-m-f-ing-core.
August 12, 2009 at 6:41 pm
jen
I liked the all of a kind family series (Eastern European immigrant Jews in early 20th-c NYC) although I haven’t looked at them since I was 8 or so, so who knows. if your kid can handle the Little House books they might also be good read-aloud books. With 100% less problematic Indian history. Probably.
August 12, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Chris Johnson
I just got through the Little House series with my 6-year-old. We had the hook that I grew up at Little House in the Big Woods (nearly the same spot), but in spite of that he liked Farmer Boy best. That one stands alone from the others, and has all sorts of things in it about daily life. You could start there and see how it flies. If your wife says you’re poaching on her turf, claim it’s a different animal, which it is. Speaking of animals, it also has lots of animal stuff in there, like how to train a young ox to pull a wagon or sleigh. My son thought that was the coolest part.
August 12, 2009 at 6:53 pm
JRoth
Hey, it turns out that my friend Jonah Winter will be interviewed on Morning Edition tomorrow about his Gilbert & Sullivan book. Pattersong will be featured!
August 12, 2009 at 7:04 pm
JRoth
look for kid’s picture books about white abolitionists
Surely there are John Brown bios targeted at preschoolers?
in spite of that he liked Farmer Boy best
My daughter was completely absorbed by the Little House books (it was the theme for her 5th b-day, she sometimes has her Barbie & Polly Pockets* dolls enact “Laura & Mary” stories, etc.), but she couldn’t get through Farmer Boy. I suspect sheer sexism.
* Don’t get me started
August 12, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Laura Wimberley
Here’s a list of best kids’ books of 2009 chosen by librarians.
There are a bunch of historical topics in there that aren’t too depressing: a biography of Alice Roosevelt, saving buffalo from extinction, everyday life in the 1950s.
August 12, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Davis X. Machina
Rule of thumb in this house is that a read-aloud book can comfortably be about four-five years ahead of the read-ee’s chronological age, with a live reader to smooth the bumps. We loved Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series (vaguely Mabinogion-ish Welsh tales, but then father is a sometime Celtic-studies scholar.)
I noticed that Wilentz got a good third of the way into the Lincoln reviews before his resentment at not being able to play Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. to Hillary Clinton’s JFK made its inevitable appearance. That’s better than usual.
August 12, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Charlieford
Well, I read William L. Shirer’s RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH when I was in sixth grade. I don’t really believe it should be in an elementary school library, per se–goes on at length, and very graphically, into some of the “medical experiments,” among other things. But I was and am grateful for the sense of human nature it imparts. Maybe for a five year old, skip the mother’s suicide thing. But the rest is right on, and will come in much handier than anything else he might read. “Friends? What is ‘friends’? Lock them in a room for three days with no food, and I’ll show you what is ‘friends”!”
August 12, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Michael Elliott
Maybe for a five year old, skip the mother’s suicide thing.
Yes, I’d probably skip that.
August 12, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Greg Miller
Jon Scieszka’s Time Warp Trio books are a lot of fun–early chapter books, much shorter than the Little House on the Prairie stuff. Worked pretty good for me, anyway. And stay away from that literature stuff; I killed bedtime reading when he was in 5th or 6th grade with Moby Dick.
August 12, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Jason B.
There’s always Ulysses. I mean, nobody understands that stuff, so why not start their bewilderment early?
August 12, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Martha Bridegam
Esther Forbes’ Johnny Tremain.
Among other things, puts tea parties back in their proper context.
August 13, 2009 at 5:03 am
Dr J
Seconding Farmer Boy as an introduction to big-kid books. The chapters are just the right length to substitute for a full book at bedtime, so you can serialize.
My 6-yo has also enjoyed “We Are the Ship,” a book about the Negro leagues. It has amaaaazing illustrations.
August 13, 2009 at 7:38 am
Emily
My friend just got this book for her goddaughter, and says it’s great: http://www.amazon.com/This-Land-Your-Woody-Guthrie/dp/0316065641/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1250173661&sr=8-3 It’s got all the verses about socialism and the Depression, apparently.
Re Atlanta: When I was a kid in an Atlanta Montessori school, we read a lot of picture books/easy chapter books about MLK and Rosa Parks and other civil rights heroes. We also, admittedly, got fed a lot of first Thanksgiving/Revolution/westward expansion stuff, but the civil rights importance of Atlanta definitely got emphasized.
Mind you, when I was in elementary school I also read a lot of books about small anthropomorphic mammals (Redwall, Wind in the Willows, Watership Down) and now I want to do American cultural history for a living, so.
August 13, 2009 at 8:26 am
human
What a great discussion. I will have to go and look for some of these books. I don’t have anything to add except that I too loved the Little House and Great Brain books. And actually, because I had read the Little House books to bits as a kid, when I went there as an adult, a lot of things about the environment were familiar. It was kind of eerie and definitely very cool.
I have run into trouble trying to wing it on American history indoctrination. The problem is that there is so much that is depressing, bloody, nasty… I remember deciding on a whim to tell my friend’s daughters about Jane Fonda. Then when I got to the part about why she went to Vietnam, I was stuck! I couldn’t tell them about the US government plan to bomb the dikes and cause a famine — not unless I wanted them to have nightmares or something. I wish kids had a pause button so I could have a chance to think these things out.
August 13, 2009 at 8:27 am
human
“there” being South Dakota, sorry.
August 13, 2009 at 9:06 am
JRoth
Maybe for a five year old, skip the mother’s suicide thing.
Why? It’s a great learning opportunity.
“So you see, Nico, little Adolph wouldn’t go to bed on time, and so his mommy hilled herself. Ready for night-night?”
August 13, 2009 at 10:53 am
docdave
When I was 5 or 6, my well-meaning parents encouraged my crafty and history-loving aunt to start buying me the American Heritage Junior Library volumes, along with the Horizon “Caravel” series. I devoured them, went on to the “real” American Heritage (still in hardcovers, back then), to which my aforementioned crafty aunt had given us a subscription. My parents blamed her for my turning to crime–er, to history.
Somehow, I saved most of the books–and the volumes of AH, to which I’ve added when possible (it’s amazing how many libraries’ surplus sales have yielded these). Now, I see the limitations and biases and omissions of those junior volumes, but they made good reading and provided a “hook” for any kid with a possible inclination toward the study of history. My daughter (7 years old going on 19) has found them and I’ve caught her poring over a couple of the titles. The text is mostly readable and the illustrations are plentiful, in color and well-chosen. They too often reflect a comfortable “grown-up” middle-brow ethnocentricity, but that’s a deficiency one can compensate for, once the child has been hooked by the stories.
Other things that have piqued my daughter’s historical curiosity? Reading “Kidnapped” out loud at bedtime (she still hasn’t quite figured out the whole Jacobite thing, but she knows it’s there) and, gloriously, seeing “The General.” She’s in love with Buster Keaton and his beloved engine but has more than an inkling of what’s going on in the context. Explaining to her that our family hails from Big Shanty has made her curious about what went on with them during The Late Unpleasantness; soudns like a “teaching summer” in store for me. Another new favorite of hers? Tevye the Dairyman–plenty of on-the-fly verbal footnotes with these stories.. And oh yes, the Little House books. I’m not allowed to read them with her (girls’ books, I am told), but my wife is kindly letting me skim them, so I’ll know what’s going on.
August 13, 2009 at 11:14 am
Ahistoricality
(girls’ books, I am told)
What? House-building and sod-busting and hunting and Indians and prairie fires are girl stories?
Oh, another recommendation, espeically for New York and Jewish connections: the “All of a kind family” books. Fantastic turn-of-the-century grit. These are mostly girls, but I still don’t see it as a “girl’s book.”
But maybe that’s just us.
August 13, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Emily
Oh man, Kidnapped! I’d completely forgotten that was one of my favorites when I was 13–and obsessed with the Jacobites.
August 13, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Gennis
My son’s school did US History last year. Here are some of the
things we read for first grade.
We read several books by Jean Fritz, like “Why Don’t You Get a
Horse, Sam Adams?”
My son really liked the “If you…” books, like “If You Lived at
the Time of the American Revolution”.
Books written as early readers worked well because my son could
read them himself. He read Abe Lincoln’s Hat, and a biography of
Benjamin Banneker, and one of Harriet Tubman, and probably a few
others from the library.
We read the d’Aulaire books on Benjamin Franklin, George
Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. I don’t like these much
personally; they seem sappy.
August 13, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Chris Johnson
Docdave:
I swear I had those American Heritage Junior Library books virtually memorized — I read them over and over. And, as you say, the pictures are well done and mostly in color. It was a great day when I’d come home from school, circa 1962 or so, and find a new one had come in the mail. They do have the drawbacks you mentioned, but overall I think they’re great way to get grade-school kids hooked on history.
August 13, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Jackmormon
Owls in the Family, by Farley Mowatt, about growing up (with pet owls) in Saskatchewan—which really could be Minnesota if you squinted a bit. We loved this book when we were kids.
August 14, 2009 at 5:34 am
Michael Elliott
To cap this thread off, here’s the link to the NPR interview with JRoth’s friend, Jonah Winter. Great stuff:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111831707
August 14, 2009 at 5:36 am
Michael Elliott
Except that seem to have bungled that. Try again.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111831707
August 14, 2009 at 9:33 am
JRoth
Thanks, Michael.
August 14, 2009 at 9:44 am
Western Dave
I think the way you hook a kid at that age is with Context. They really are not ready for books that handle cause and effect, contingency, complexity, or change over time. So look for books that present lots of context of different times and places and let your 5 year-old figure out some of the questions to ask. So I’ll second the Prydain series, (I’m reading to my 6 year old daughter now), Chronicles of Narnia, Luci Tapahanso’s Navajo ABCs (“why do Navajo’s make jewelry out of money?” she asked. Which led to a fun twenty minutes. NB: dad knows a little something about Navajos). He’s probably not ready for biographies as fodder for developing a budding historian. Magic Tree House is available as books on tape, which is a plus for rainy days and car rides and has high excitement factor, not so great on evoking context. If you wanted your kid to be a medical examiner, MTH is the way to go. And the OZ books. These are fabulous for developing good history skills in the tykes and very boy friendly. (Unlike Little House which,I predict, will bore him to tears).
August 14, 2009 at 2:59 pm
bitchphd
Surely there are John Brown bios targeted at preschoolers?
Actually there are.
Re. my hassling Ari, actually I got a great (and huge) timeline poster from the Carus Publishing folks not long ago that’s pretty good. And much appreciate TF Smith’s recommendations. But above all, I’m giggling at having prodded Ari into being a teensy bit snappy. Hehehehehe.
August 14, 2009 at 3:02 pm
bitchphd
very boy friendly. (Unlike Little House which,I predict, will bore him to tears).
Teh totally sexist. PK loved the little house books, and I have found that if you give boys books/movies with girl protagonists without comment, they accept them just fine. Sort of how girls have always done about “boy” books.
August 14, 2009 at 3:04 pm
ari
Snappy? Moi? Hardly. I was snarky, b. The internet, donchaknow.
August 14, 2009 at 4:52 pm
bitchphd
All I know is that I had to go have a good cry, Ari.
August 14, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Ben Alpers
Some mention should be made of the British Horrible Histories series, which my kids really liked.
August 14, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Ben Alpers
Whoops….there was supposed to be a link there. Here it is:
Horrible Histories
August 14, 2009 at 6:06 pm
TF Smith
My pleasure, Dr. B.
August 15, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Doctor Science
Speaking as the parent of a college student and a middle-schooler:
– The Little House books, yeah everyone recs them but it’s for a *reason*. There’s a profile of the Wilder Women in the New Yorker this week that IMHO fails to address the series’ greatest virtue: SHOW DON’T TELL. Adult!Writer!Laura is unusually honest about her life: in her feelings about her family, in their constant failures and dependence on government and an industrial system, in the way the Ingalls family’s advent destroyed the wilderness Pa & Laura loved.
– my kids’ reading of the Gonick Cartoon Histories put them on a HS or even college level of understanding of American and world history. Start young, give lots of time to re-read so things seep in.
– the Woody Guthrie book Emily describes is superb.
August 15, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Western Dave
Bitch PhD,
Actually my daughter was bored to tears by Little House. My son, incidentally, is a huge fan of Strawberry Shortcake. I think kids like LH because their mothers liked LH (inexplicably, to my mind) and the mothers do the reading of that book. When it comes to reading aloud the enthusiasm of the reader makes all of the difference, not necessarily the source material. I spent so much time editing LH on the fly for racism and violence that I couldn’t put the proper enthusiasm into it. And without that enthusiasm she was bored. Now I gotta go turn the boys’ Junie B Jones CD off because he finally fell asleep hours ago but he left it on repeat.
August 16, 2009 at 1:01 am
Bitchphd
Heh, I hated those books as a kid and only picked them for PK on someone else’s rec. Little brat hates the stories I loved (sad animal stories).
August 16, 2009 at 10:36 pm
felix
Freedom on the Menu is a sweet and accessible picture book about sit-ins, Tomie dePaola has a few books that are about historical figures (St. Francis of Assisi and others) and a series of autobiographical stories that capture the 30s and 40s from a kid’s eye view, I read my daughter two Frances Hodgson Burnett books which are ideologically problematic, but they both sparked interesting conversations about how the world was for English kids 100 years ago, Laurence Yep seems to have written dozens of books, they’re consistently good reads, and a number of them take place at various points in the past (there are a lot set in contemporary times as well). That’s all I can think of that haven’t been mentioned above, but I also have to throw in the utterly awesome Pushcart War which is total fiction but somehow seems like something a budding history fancier would love.
August 19, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Western Dave
By Hand!
August 27, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Matt Karlsen
My kids (who are just a couple years older) love:
Christopher Paul Curtis’ Watsons Go To Birmingham, Elijah of Buxton, and Bud Not Buddy
We Are The Ship
The Center for Cartoon Studies’ books on Houdini and Satchel Paige
Good luck!