How to Live Like a Medival Knight

Follow the adventures of Gilbert Marshall in A Medieval Knight (How to Live Like.)as he takes you on a journey with him to become a knight.

We begin with an age appropriate introduction to medieval society. The author provides lots of picture support for what are complicated concepts and manages to explain without over simplifying the ideas. Gilbert talks about his life as a page and what it is like to live in a castle. We follow him as he is knighted and we learn more about the arms and armor of the time. Gilbert then goes on to explain about the purpose of tournaments before going on to discuss war in the Middle Ages.

For a picture book this book provides quite a bit of information for a child on what it would take to become a knight. While most younger children would find this a read aloud book, the book is heavily supported with pictures and labels to help children start to what might be new vocabulary for the time period.

Roughing It on the Oregon Trail

Roughing It on the Oregon Trail is another picture book in Diane Stanley's Time Traveling Twins historical fiction picture book series.

If you aren't familiar with the Time Traveling Twins, there are three books in the series in addition to this book Joining the Boston Tea Party (The Time-Traveling Twins) and Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation (The Time-Traveling Twins) and in all the books the twins travel back in time with their grandmother using a magic hat.

This trip begins with the children discussing family pictures on the wall in their grandmother's house. She asks them which person they'd like to meet and they settle on a picture of a relative who traveled on the Oregon Trail. Thus we find ourselves with the children crossing the west.

I like this series because children are drawn into the time period by sharing the history with other modern children. The fictional children ask questions and act in ways that help bridge the time period between the past and present for children reading or hearing the story.

This is a picture book designed for younger children, so some concepts are simplified or glossed over. The book does attempt to address the challenges without dealing with the realities of death and disease. If you are looking for a story that addresses the issues with the Native American population you won't find it here. This is not a book making social statements, it is a book designed to introduce children used to modern transportation to life during the age of wagon travel.

If you are looking for an introduction to western expansion for younger students this is a good start or an extra read for your unit.