FAND'S BOOKSHELF OF HISTORICALLY ORIENTED BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
The
majority of these books are not historical fact but historical fiction.
However, they represent a good cross section of the books that got me
interested in history as a child.
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Viking's Dawn
by Henry Treece |
"This is the first part of Treece's Viking trilogy and it is by far the best part. The story is quite simple;
a group of rovers form a crew in the western fjords of Norway and sail west, to Britain, in search of
gold. The hero is Harald Sigurdson, a young boy who was intending to sail with his father, who is seriously injured in one of the early chapters. Thus Harald is on his own, and is forced to grow into a man very quickly by the hardship that he faces upon the waves." |
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by Henry Treece |
"This is the second part of Treece's trilogy about the Norwegian Viking, Harald Sigurdson. It's set in about the year 800 and tells a fairly typical adventure for a Norwegian Viking of the period, sailing to Ireland in search of treasure." |
The Golden Goblet
by Eloise Jarvis |
Ranofer, a goldsmith's apprentice during the Egyptian New Kingdom, is orphaned and in dire straits. Then he finds out that his step brother Gebu has some lovely new gold tableware.. | |
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An
Indian History of the American West
by Dee Brown |
Not a
children's book as such but a book on the history of the subjugation of the
Native American peoples that made an impression on me as a child. |
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The Tin Princess
by Philip Pullman |
A detective story set in Victorian Europe, centring around upheavals in the Kingdom of Razkavia. It is the last of a series of four books but can be read alone. The other three books are The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North and The Tiger in the Well. |
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Outcast
by Rosemary Sutcliff |
The story of a Roman boy raised by Ancient Britons before being captured and sold as a slave in Rome. In retrospect, it seems a little homoerotic although there are certainly no overt references to such things. | |
The Eagle of the Ninth
by Rosemary Sutcliff |
Set
in Roman Britain this story is of a young Roman officer who sets out to
discover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of the Ninth Legion,
who marched into the mists of Northern Britain and never returned. Marcus
Aquila is determined to find out what happened to his father and the legion.
His venture to find them is seen as a quest so hazardous, noone expects him
to return |
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