At my library job, if someone is checking out a huge stack of interesting books, I'll usually strike up a conversation with the patron while I'm scanning the barcodes and demagnetizing the spines. It's almost impossible for me to check out books to someone without reading the titles. One day I was fortunate enough to help two women checking out a stack of kids' history books. Surprisingly, a lot of them were about Genghis Khan. I had read one of them, a picture book titled
Genghis Khan, to a 5-year-old and a 9-year-old, and I told the women I didn't think that book gave very clear explanations. The women agreed that the book, although beautifully illustrated, is deeply flawed. They recommended I check out the Wicked History series. I immediately got online and started putting holds on them left and right. These books are fantastic! So far, I have read the biographies of
Mary Tudor,
Genghis Khan and
Tomas de Torquemada. To be honest, the Mary Tudor biography was a little dry, but the other two were terrific. They were both written by the historian
Norman Itzkowitz. He has written a couple others in the series about Vlad the Impaler and Rasputin. I will definitely read those when I have more time.
The women at the library also told me to check out this cool website for kids:
http://www.historyforkids.org/ It was started by Karen Carr, a history professor at Portland State. Check it out.
Due to the graphic descriptions and pictures in the books, they are probably not suitable for kids younger than 8. I believe the historical information to be gained from these books is well worth all the gory subject matter.
