Customer Reviews

Don't Know Much About the Kings and Queens of England

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

 

 

I wanted a book to share with my 5th grader, to give an overview of the English monarchy and a feeling for the scope and sweep of British history. Instead, this book gives only a rather disjointed look at a small selection of monarchs, and does not manage to connect people and events in any kind of meaningful timeline. I didn't expect in-depth analysis, but was definitely disappointed with the isolated, and rather fuzzy, snapshots of history that this book presents.

This was a very helpful book as I was teaching history to my 6th grader. It helped me clarify these folks in my brain.

I don't know if there is more than one version but the other reviewers confuse me. My book has dates for each monarch, as well as a timeline in the back.

I wanted to mention that this is a "children's" book, with lots of illustrations, and about the size of a medium-large picture book. It is *not* like some of the other "Don't Know Much" books for older grades & adults (although this adult liked it). And it is not worth hundreds of dollars LOL!

Do you know which king wasn't a king, refused the crown, and called himself Lord Protector? Who was England's first properly crowned queen, not just the king's wife? Which queen served the longest, 63 years, and what was so good about "Good Queen Anne?" Why did George V change his last name to Windsor? And when Edward IV died, what happened to the princes in the Tower of London? Find the answers to these and many, many other intriguing questions in Kenneth Davis' Don't Know Much About The Kings & Queens Of England. Written in an easy to read, question and answer format, and complemented by S D Schindler's playful and humorous artwork, Mr Davis fills his book with fascinating history, engaging fun facts, and entertaining trivia about twenty-four of England's most interesting kings and queens, and the times in which they lived. Perfect for youngsters 9-12, this is the latest entry in Mr Davis' marvelous Don't Know Much About series, and as he tells the reader in his introduction, "...this one proves that real history about real people is a lot more fun than a bunch of simple dates and facts. And the true stories of some of the most famous monarchs of England are much more fascinating than you'd ever imagine."

This book is extremely interesting. It follows the format of the rest of the "Don't Know Much" series and mixes interesting facts with history. My only problem with this book is that it didn't give any sort of a timeline for the order of the Kings and Queens.