Customer Reviews

A 16th Century Galleon (Inside Story)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is interesting and informative for children of all ages. I had forgotten how much fun it is to lose yourself in a time period through beautiful illustrations and facts that let your imagination leap into the pages. Parents will love explaining the lively pictures to their children.

Although this seems to have been marketed as a children's book, I've found it very helpful as a source of background information for adult historical fiction set on such a galleon. The text is straightforward and readily understandable, but not childish; and the sidebars are written at a more technical level. Extensive technical-quality illustrations with callouts naming the parts (such as all of the ropes for raising, bracing and extending a typical square sail) provide detail that's difficult to find anywhere else for this era of sailing technology. And the illustrations help me visualize the settings of my story. As a bonus, you get to see the many types of specialists involved in building and sailing a galleon, how they dressed and the tools they used. There's a page illustrating the use of an astrolabe, cross-staff, etc.; again, detail I haven't found anywhere else for this era.

After returning my overdue borrowed copy to the library I thought I'd just buy one. I had no idea they would be so rare or so expensive, but it makes sense. If you can find one, you'll get what you paid for.

The "Inside Story" series has recently been republished and is now known at the "Spectacular Visual Guide" series. This wonderful series of books teaches history to school age children by examining structures. Each of the books focuses on the construction of the structures. The series has beautiful books about such varied structures as the Roman Colliseum, Parthenon, Medieval cathederals, castles, Shakespearean theaters and train stations. The series weds great writing with first class illustration. I have purchased all the books in the series and I would urge others to do the same.

"16th Century Galleon" and "World War Two-Submarine" are the only two books in the series that focus on naval vessels. It is this focus on naval architecture that takes this particular book from five stars to four stars. Like any other specialized field, naval architecture has unique words and terms that are far outside the normal use of English. My nine year old son had problems relating to this specialized vocabulary. Having said that Mark Bergin's beautifully rendered illustrations still kept us riveted to the pages. This a good book and recommend it and the entire series.