900s: Early Days and Knightly Ways: Series Nonfiction on Ancient and Medieval History

Uneven quality marks this gathering of new titles about life from centuries past. On the one hand, newly fledged readers now have a chance to meet Cleopatra, and middle schoolers can discover a host of extant “Wonders” to go with the original seven. On the other, quick trips through well-traveled topics, perfunctory back matter, and poorly used primary-source material add nothing useful to titles already on most library shelves. All of the volumes here at least feature leads to further information.

Gr 1-3–Despite crafts in each volume that are often truly lame, this series should draw both recently minted and older but reluctant readers. Except for Cleopatra, which is illustrated with 19th-century paintings, each book features large photos of, mostly, ancient art or artifacts paired with clear, simply-written texts in easily digestible blocks or insets. Gods introduces nine important deities, but also covers such related topics as sacred animals and ways of ancient worship, for instance, and Hieroglyphs not only provides charts of symbols for sounds and numbers but also descriptions of papyrus making, the Book of the Dead, and the Rosetta stone. Budding Egyptologists will find the print and Web resources at the end well chosen to expedite their studies.

Gr 2-4–Framed as answers to the same nine questions, each of these Eurocentric introductions opens with a historical overview (which includes a map), then goes on to describe family life, common occupations, schooling (if any), social classes, government, and religion. Each section, consisting of one or two spreads, includes a brief inset profile of a historical figure, such as a temple singer in Egypt or Pericles’s companion and speech writer, Aspasia, in Greece, plus several large color photos of period art and artifacts. Despite B.C./A.D. dating and occasional banality–“The most important person in Ancient Egypt was the pharaoh…”–these books should make at least some ancient cultures seem a little more tangible to young students.

Gr 4-6–Rare references to more distant locales aside, these present-tense profiles present a conventional, narrowly Western Eurocentric view of medieval society. Each one opens with a similar précis of the hierarchical social order. It then follows a fictional, unnamed subject from birth to death, retracing a successful career and pausing for glances at schooling, training, daily and annual routines, celebrations, and typical tasks and accomplishments. Social roles and expectations are largely set in stone, with regional variations seldom noted. Moreover, several vague historical allusions, such as the assertion that “[Eleanor of Aquitaine] led a scandalous life of rumor while trying to retain power” and terms like “churched,” will not be meaningful to most readers. Along with unenlightening, contextless quotes from contemporary or later writers (“There was meat and merrymaking and much delight”), the narratives are supported with undifferentiated mixes of crudely drawn new art and enlarged details from unidentified period or later illuminated manuscripts.

Gr 4-5–Though these surveys mix revealing schematics with period images and photos of artifacts or ruins, they are only superficial skims of their topics. Castles, for instance, offers no background on the fortifications from which medieval castles developed nor (aside from one entrance tunnel and some views from above) any interior views. The author’s discussions of siegecraft, swordcraft, and weapons manufacture are brief at best, and errors range from careless writing (iron flails sometimes “hurt soldiers as well as enemies”) to factual flubs minor (no, scorpions don’t bite) and major (“A curved sword was used for stabbing”). In addition, the unusual aerial plans of representative battles, included in several volumes, are confusingly presented. For both browsing and research, these take second place to equivalent titles in the “Kingfisher Knowledge” (Kingfisher) and “Eyewitness” (DK) series.

Gr 4-5–Snedden uses such a broad definition of “technology” that his overviews lack focus. In China, for instance, along with mentioning the development of central heating, block printing, porcelain manufacture, and the compass, he ranges off into silkworm culture, farming techniques, traditional medicine, and general history. As a result, the books provide only tantalizing wisps of information. Each of the five sets of disconnected topical spreads gives way without any wrap-up to a time line and a few wide-angle information sources. Dropped lines of text in Ancient Rome and a backward schematic of an Archimedes Screw in Ancient Greece are signs of careless production to boot. The illustrations sometimes pair ancient and modern images in order to make connections, but that’s not enough to make this more than an also-ran next to Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods’s “Ancient Technology” series (Lerner).

Gr 5-7–Using a tour of the original seven wonders as their springboard, these books comb UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites to present similar profiles of seven extant but lesser-known man-made wonders. These range from the immense Nazca geoglyphs in modern Peru and Sudan’s little-known Kush pyramids to Japan’s Todaiji–the largest wooden building in the world–and the massive, 2000-year-old Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines. Each gets a chapter, well endowed with side panels; quotes from archaeologists; and color photos, period art, or, in Ancient World, more recent reconstructions (such as a photograph of Lenin’s tomb in the section on the mausoleum at Halicarnassus). The authors retrace the history of each site, describe preservation challenges and efforts, and close with generous, annotated resource lists–plus an invitation to readers to choose an eighth wonder.

Scoring high in reader appeal and curriculum connections alike, the “Ancient Egypt” and “Seven Wonders” series will serve to strengthen both libraries and better-funded classroom collections. “Medieval Lives” and “Medieval Warfare” are strictly additional purchases where European history is a particular local emphasis, and “Technology in Times Past” would be best considered only for completist science history collections.

A Trip in Time: Series Nonfiction on History (Spring 2009)

The Worst of Times: Series Nonfiction on Modern History (Fall 2008)

Looking Back: Series Nonfiction on American History (Fall 2008)