Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Books like Horrible Histories for older kids

How historically accurate are any textbooks put in front of elementary/middle school kids...just the other day someone posted an article about a history text book claiming that slavery wasn't what the civil war was about (and here I am paraphrasing the article and not sure how accurately I am paraphrasing the article)...something about the text book company was going to change the online version of the text due to the uproar/backlash but the hardback copies could be out there for a long time.

I think when you boil all of the Vikings down to 3 or so short lessons and a bunch of activities you aren't going to be able to write a Ph.D. thesis on them. You are going to get the basics as a foundation.

With the classical education model...you go through the cycle in elementary school at a basic level. You repeat it in middle school more in depth and repeat it again in high school. With some gifted children...you could skip going through the cycle three times and just do it more in depth and detailed once at the higher level at an earlier age.

My older son did Story of the World as a homeschooler in elementary, regular middle school classes in public school (world history, civics, american history) and has now expressed that history is his favorite subject in high school. He has taken AP Human Geography and AP World History. He isn't profoundly gifted and I wasn't a history major to know how awful they really are so I think the Story of the World was fine for him.

I had to skip some parts when I read it to DS, for instance there were a couple chapters in the ancient history book that were based on nothing but the Bible.
The exodus of Israelites from Egypt, for example, makes for a nice Bible story for a religious school or religious homeschoolers, but historians would say it's not supported by the evidence. The problem was that the book presented it like it was historical fact. If they had just written it as a story in the Bible, claiming that is what it is, then I would have been fine with it.

maybe she's ready for some biographies/autobiographies? The Young Royals series could be good, although a bit below her reading level?

I think the new edition of SOTW1 is clearer about that.

Yes, I can imagine that some families would find SOTW1 a little problematic (in terms of the Christian bent). Nonetheless the four books have been one of the best resources we have provided for our DCs. They provide a good overview of the sweep of world history and have given them a framework for further reading in other sources. So much better than what many kids experience in US schools - a big glob of US-focused history over and over again with little else besides.

I think that's an overgeneralization. Our public school is doing a pretty outstanding job teaching world history (including the stories of various empires and peoples).

I do think SOTW is problematic-- it's not just a "bias," it's not having the facts right. Matters to me, YMMV.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the Horrible Histories books are exactly (although I think I get the general idea, just don't know them well) , so this might not be what you're looking for.
Anyway, your DD might like this book - called Outbreak! Plagues That Changed History - about, well, diseases, etc. Based on the Amazon reviews some people didn't love it - it's great for an interesting read but not incredibly in depth - but I think it does a nice job of combining 'gross' diseases with history. It looks at diseases in more of historical social/medical context -- eg, how people viewed tuberculosis and thought the plague spread by miasma, etc.

I also thought of this one. "How they Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous."

http://www.amazon.com/How-They-Croa...5825806&sr=8-1&keywords=how+they+croaked

I think SOTW is problematic too--but if you combine it with other materials it can be problematic in a good way because the storytelling nature of it lends itself to discussing why those stories were chosen and teaching kids early on that they can't just trust a book because it seems to be nonfiction. I also think they're good for helping a child get a better understanding of time and geography. Still, I read those books with mine. I don't think I'd want to just hand them to her and say, "here's history."

For reading/working on her own, mine finds her way in through historical fiction and then selects nonfiction that arises based on the book. Series she likes are Royal Diaries, the Dear America series, and the Journal series by Marissa Moss. Her librarian turned her on to the Giants of Science series.They're really science books, but she gets inspired to read about corresponding historical subjects when she's reading one of them.

Edited because your daughter is in a higher grade than I thought. But if she is only 10, she might still like some of them. They're all fun girl books.

Not a book, but did you know that the BBC made 5 seasons of Horrible History? Covers a lot of the same material as the books, but with catchy tunes and funny sketches.