A Chronicle of America: Colonial Times 1600 - 1700 by Joy Masoff ISBN:  043905107X (School binding)   48 pages, interest level about ages 5-12, reading level about grade 4, size is about 8.5" x 11"   I'm afraid that I can't recommend this book.  That doesn't happen very often, but I didn't care for this book.  I'm not here to run down authors and their books, but I do want to give legitimate reviews that give examples of why I don't or do like certain books. What I was looking for was a "This Is Everyday Life in Colonial Times" type of book.  I wanted pictures of what people wore, what they ate, what they did all day, how they accomplished whatever it was they were trying to accomplish ... you know, something to make colonial times seem real. For the most part this book does fulfill that need.  There are many photos of actors in authentic dress.  It appears that many photos were taken at Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown/Yorktown, and Plimoth Plantation which I believe are all living history museums.  Here's a list of the topics covered: -Europe in the 1600s -life on board ship, space, bugs, disease -picking out settlement locations -Native Americans were here first, trading, homes -settlers building homes, materials, heating -food, planting, storing, sick of lobster -clothing, washing, making -children learning, working -sickness, bloodletting, herbs -weapons, fighting clothes, defending themselves -slavery, indentured servants -religion, Puritans, Catholics, Anglicans, witches -John Smith, Pocahontas, Plymouth Rock, Squanto -natural resources, lumber, fish, tobacco -economics, currency,  -cultural melting pot -Native American lands dwindle -places to visit: Carter's Grove, Jamestown, Plimoth Also included are little activities.  I see only five.  So don't count on this being a book with lots of activities.  The five activities featured are:  Turk's-head bracelet with thick string; corn cakes out of cornmeal; cloth dying with flowers, berries, and weeds; writing with a feather quill; making a settler bandage.  These seem like reasonable activities, but the settler bandage didn't make much sense to me.  The book described the student scraping a piece of linen with a butter knife.  The fuzz that came off was supposed to be piled up until it was a mound the size of a teaspoon.  And that's the end of it.  I think something's missing unless early settlers just put fuzz on their wounds as a dressing. The Colonial Period is about 170 years long!  Jamestown was first settled in 1607, but the Colonial Period extends up until the American Revolution at 1776.  That's a long time.  Compare the 170 years of the Colonial Period to the rest of American history like this:  1607-1776 (about 170 years) 1776-1946 (about 170 years) The Colonial Period in America was as long as the time period stretching from the signing of the Declaration of Independence until the end of World War II!  Because this book indicates on the cover that it includes only 1600-1700, 76 years of the Colonial Period of U.S. history are neglected in this book.  To add to that, it seems to me that this book focuses mostly on the first settlements and life in those first settlements during the first about 20 or so years of the Colonial Period.  In effect, it seems that we get coverage of only the first 20 years of the a period that spans 170.  Possibly my assessment is warped, though, since I'm no expert, but this bothered me about the book because the title is Colonial Times instead of The First 20 Years of Settlement. Okay, I'll admit it; I'm no historian.  (Yeah, I know that's no big surprise.)  But as many of us know, homeschooling moms often learn quite a bit as they work with their scholars.  For me, there was quite a bit of new information in this book.  For instance:  "One of the first people to settle in America described it as a scary wilderness full of wild beasts and even wilder men.  But in truth, it wasn't like that at all.  Most of the coastline had already been settled by ... the Native Americans.  For centuries they had been clearing acres and acres of land and planting crops.  The America the newcomers found was anything but untamed wilderness!  The first Europeans to come to the New World found already cleared fields and abandoned Native American villages where the could take temporary shelter."  After reading this, I went to the back of the book looking for some sort of footnotes or documentation for this information.  However, this book has no footnotes, nor a bibliography.  It sounds plausible that early settlers had temporary shelters waiting for them, but this book doesn't direct the readers to a place to find more information.  One question that this passage from the book raised is:  What types of dwellings were left in these Native American villages?  How long would these dwellings have lasted?  Further, the claim that America wasn't at all a scary wilderness full of wild beasts is questionable.  If one compared it to London, it surely was! Another passage that gave me pause was, "Some ships pulled up to America's shores with nothing left to eat!  After months at sea with no fresh food, is it any wonder that some early settlers were forced to turn to cannibalism?"  Where are the footnotes supporting that statement?  We are told on the next page in a sidebar that one man in Jamestown was put to death for eating his dead wife and that people dug up bodies from the graveyard.  But did cannibalism occur only in Jamestown?  The colonies were a huge chunk of land.  Was Jamestown an isolated incident?  And oddly enough, the statement indicates that it was "... the months at sea with no fresh food ..." that forced the settlers to turn to cannibalism.  Did the cannibal in Jamestown jump off the ship and immediately begin his cannibalism?  Something doesn't add up.  What's the whole story?  We aren't given the whole story or even an indication of where we can go to find that whole story.  I think that more information should have been included. Lastly, on page 22, we're told, "In the early days of the European settlements, 80 percent of the people who came to Virginia died once they got here."  This is shocking.  But where does the information come from and how can we find out more?  Knowing that 80 percent died once they got to Virginia raises all sorts of questions.  But the book gives us no help in answering these questions. The above examples are not isolated examples of lack of footnotes and information.  The author seems to want to make the book very interesting, and sometimes shocking the reader is the method she uses.  At other times, it's not a matter of shocking the reader, but rather trying to debunk a long-held belief about the American colonies.  Yes, I would love to learn more about the Colonial Period, even have my long-standing thoughts overturned, but if there are no footnotes, if there's no way to even look up what the author is referring to, then what's the point of including it in a book?  I much prefer documentable facts when it comes to teaching my children, and I'm sorry that this book has too much questionable info in it.  So, you could conceivably use this book as a term project for a high schooler--having your student try to document the book for the author.  That's one use.  It could be used as a picture book for young children because the photos are good and interesting.  You could also read it aloud to your youngsters deleting out any objectionable parts as you go along.  However, usually we buy books to read and learn from. I read Colonial Times aloud to my children (13yob, 11yog) as part of our studies on the Colonial Period in American History.  For us, this book was a good discussion for Critical Thinking in U.S. History.  That's wasn't how I had hoped to use this book, though.  So for books that describe everyday life in the American Colonies, I would recommend: If You Lived in Colonial Times by Ann McGovern Covers 1630-1730, New England Colonies, no footnotes (but not so much questionable information that makes you wonder where the footnotes are), 80 pages, illustrated with drawings, 3rd grade reading level, interest level about ages 5-10. If You Lived in Williamsburg in Colonial Days by Barbara Brenner Covers the capital of Virginia in 1770, no footnotes (but not so much questionable information that makes you wonder where the footnotes are), 80 pages, illustrated with drawings, 3rd grade reading level, interest level about ages 5-10. Album of America:  Colonial Period by James Truslow Adams, e.d. (out of print-see LINKS) Covers Columbus to 1776, colonies North to South covered, no footnotes (but the acknowledgments page is all in tiny print), published by Scribner's in 1944, part of a series of books, 411 pages, enormous amount of old drawings, paintings, and photos of items, all b&w, some text, but mostly pictures.

comments concerning ordering     Homeschool RAQ     Joy Masoff also wrote: American Revolution Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty         U.S. History Selections at Amazon.com General 1800s 1900s Black History Colonial & Revolutionary Fiction Other State & Local               Other books we used while studying the Colonial Period:   World of Captain John Smith Whose That Stepping on Plymouth Rock? Witch of Blackbird Pond A Lion to Guard US  Story of Mayflower Compact - Richards (OP)  Story of Salem Witch Trials - Kent (OP) If You Lived in Williamsburg in Colonial Days Matchlock Gun Indian Captive:  The Story of Mary Jemison  Struggle for a Continent - Marrin (OP) Making Thirteen Colonies George Washington's World  Evangeline and the Acadians - Tallant - Landmark (OP)   Rogers Rangers and the French and Indian Wars - Smith - Landmark (OP)  Settlers on a Strange Shore - McCall (OP)  Album of American History - Truslow Adams (OP) Look for OP (Out of Print) books at places listed on my LINKS page. I read almost all of  The Colonial Experience:  1607 - 1774 by Clarence B. Carson to give me a little more background.

Reviewed:  January, 2001
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