Customer Reviews

San Rafael: A Central American City Through the Ages (ILLUSTRATED)

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Wow! This book is great. I have used it in my ninth grade geography classroom as an introduction to research. The kids really enjoy the pictures, and it provides a focused look at the development of civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula. This is also a great book for readers as young as ten.

"San Rafael" follows the rise and fall and then rebirth of a Central American city. The fictional city of San Rafael is strategically located in the Peten region of Guatemala. The book begins with the first Mayan settlement and then through the centuries, the reader sees the rise and fall of an important Mayan city. After the fall of the Mayan settlement, the Spanish arrive and through the centuries we see the small Spanish settlement slowly evolve into a modern Central American city.

What makes this book work are the highly detailed illustrations of the city as it changes through the centuries. The topographic features remain the same but the buildings come and go as the fortunes of the city ebb and flow. San Rafael is part of series which also includes "Barmi", "Lebek" and "Um Al Madayan". All of the books in the sereis are beautifully illustrated. The value of the books in this series is that they show young children the "long story" of a specific place. They are all great books and I highly recommend them.

San Rafael is a fictitious city whose location is between Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and Guatemala. This book is a historical description of the changes in the city starting with the first clearing of the jungle, through the rise of the Mayan civilization, Spanish conquest and control, post-independence political and social instability to the rise of a modern industrial metropolis.
Fourteen historical epochs are examined and for each there is a textual description of the main social and political structure and specific problems. There are also four diagrams, one a two-page layout of the city, a second that is a depiction of the people going about their daily lives, one that is a small layout of the city with highlights on the main structures, and a small one that demonstrates a specific item in the city at that time. All of the last three types of diagrams also have accompanying explanatory captions.
This book is an excellent supplementary text for the study of Central America. By going through the historical phases of a city, you learn how urban life in that region has evolved over thousands of years.