The drawings are detailed and brightly colored and are intended to convey the realism of what is being portrayed. The strength of the book is the lavish illustration. The first focuses mainly on Egypt, though it touches on others such as the Assyrians and Babylonians. This book consists of three parts: Early Civilizations, The Greeks, and The Romans. What's the point of including nudity and references to reproductive anatomy, for young children? More appropriate for older children, but by then the "cartoons" would probably look like such. We are much happier with the Kingfisher books we obtained, which focus more on TEXT and IDEAS and relatively less on the cartooniness. A previous reviewer wrote "Much prefer this to Usborne's World History which has more nudity than I can allow my children." Well, that picture and the several others drawings of nude humans (frontal male and female nudity in the "cartoons") is more of a distraction and problem than we felt our young children needed when trying to learn history. And very quickly our six year old focused in on the nudity, asking us what was that unusual large "thumb" sticking straight out of the man-which was actually the erect penis of a "fertility god" representation. Yes, the pictures attracted our childrens' attention immediately, but we were wanting to teach them the ideas and themes of history, not just have them attracted by cartoons. Virtually all of the pictures are "cartoonish" hand-drawn illustrations rather than photographs. We had two main disappointments: First, we thought there were too many pictures in relation to the rather spotty text. We returned this item after browsing it and considering it for our 4- and 6-year-olds. I highly recommend it to any enthusiast, young or old. It is not only one of the most comprehensive children's tomes on Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilisations, it was the beginning of my art history career and a very pleasant part of my childhood. Thank you so very much for keeping this book alive and well on the internet. Within twenty minutes, I had found and ordered it on. By total accident, I discovered a journal I had written in as a young girl discussing this very book, and was ecstatic to find I had listed the author. Both of us have looked for this book for almost fifteen years, but having forgotten the publishing house, never stumbled upon it. She read it front-to-back and then spilled Dr. A year after I bought it, I had read it front-to-back a minimum of a dozen times and loaned it to my friend who was equally fascinated with ancient civilisations. I remember having this exact edition of the volume I purchased back in third grade.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |