I am also looking for History readers for my children for later this year. However I am looking for Ancient History (Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece and Rome) readers for age 8-9. Any suggestions?
Next I am looking for readers for the Middle ages same ages as above. Kings and Queens of England, Renaissance, Napoleon times.
TIA
I don’t have chapter book readers, but I do have substantial picture style books (longer in length and so better for middle elementary ages–some took us a week to get through). Anything by Gail Gibbons has been a great hit for us. She wrote “Mummies, Pyramids, and Pharaohs.” Our favorite though for our Egypt study was “Seeker of Knowledge: The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Heiroglyphs” by James Rumford. We also read from “The Great Pyramid” by Elizabeth Mann. Of course there is the Magic Tree House “Mummies in the Morning” and the “Fact Tracker Companion Guide: Mummies and Pyramids” also by MTH. “The 5000 Year Old Puzzle” is supposed to be really good but I think my kids were a bit too young to track with the mystery in it at the time. Mid to older elementary could do so though.
Another non-fiction but much longer picture book style reader is “Hatshepsut, His Majesty Herself” about the female pharaoh who ruled under the title of a male pharaoh and whose stepson tried to erase her from history after her reign. Following this it is fun to read “How the Sphinx Got to the Museum” about how the destroyed and buried sphinx of Hatshepsut was discovered, rebuilt and transported to the NY City Metropolitan Museum of Art (this book is more of a fun rhyming style picture book but still appropriate for mid elementary I’d say).
Okay, sorry for the rambling!! If I think of more I’ll list them. These are the ones that stood out to me from our study! I hope it’s helpful!
I hope they help!! And I hope what I typed at the beginning about picture books made sense–I realized later that it sounded like I was saying picture books were better for elementary ages than reader books, but I meant to say that these more substantial picture books worked better than the typical length picture books–I use readers with my kiddos all the time! lol! So I’m sorry if that came out wrong! I do hope those suggestions are helpful! We are going to be studying Ancient China and Ancient Greece later this year so I hope others will respond with suggestions too!!
I thought I would add that @KathiJohnson mentioned on a related post the wonderful resource of GuestHollow.com and I am so glad she did!! I have bookmarked that site several times and I haven’t gone back to it and made use of it nearly enough. I went back there tonight looking for ideas for our upcoming study of Ancient China and I found a series of books called the Royal Diaries:
They look to be fictional stories based on true historical young girls/women/princesses from various places around the world. They look to be a little old for my children yet for the one I was looking at for Ancient China (they might be ready for it in a year or two), but I had not seen these books before (and some are geared for ages 8 and up) and I also wanted to mentioned the GuestHollow site on this thread too (again, thank you @KathiJohnson!!) as another resource for good books.