The title page hooks kids in with these words—“Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About the Civil War.” The titles in the Table of Contents are crafted for more suspense beginning with—“How to Rip a Country Apart and ending with What Ever Happened to . . .?. Sheinkin masterfully chats with young people on paper as he brings history alive through the use of humor, catchy titles and subtitles, multiple structures, relevant quotes, and little known and compelling facts. He gets a lot of help in making the information accessible through the illustrations—caricatures of the famous, sketches of events, maps, and statistics.
Each chapter begins with a one-page introduction of facts that are fascinating and a catchy illustration that corresponds to the facts. The structure for the first chapter, How to Rip a Country Apart, is Steps 1-13 in which readers have a few paragraphs to explore each step. The pace is fast, the facts relevant to readers in the 21st century, and the historical characters come alive. Juicy tidbits of much-known and little-known facts are woven throughout the book. Readers get to know both presidents and what they were dealing with. I felt as though I were taking a romp through history without even realizing how much I was learning. Source notes and quotation notes ensure accuracy of the information.
About the Author
Sheinkin begins his books with Confessions of a Textbook Writer. In his confession he chats with the reader, revealing that he used to write textbooks. He never meant for them to be boring and would spend long hours in libraries searching for facts to make the textbooks fun to read. He became a story detective, filling notebooks with funny, amazing, inspiring, surprising, and disgusting stories. But when he would try to sneak those stories into textbooks his bosses blocked progress. So, what did Sheinkin do? He stashed away all those stories he wasn’t allowed to put in textbooks. And he kept telling himself that someday he’d write his own history books that included all those stories, packing the books with true stories and real quotes never found in textbooks. And he’s done it—with at least 16 books your students will want to read. Have your students take a look at the titles on Amazon.com and ask your local library to provide them with these amazing books that bring people and events to a life you and your students never imagined.
Pathways: Yesterday, Heroes
Reviewed by Krystal Bishop, EdD
Professor of Education
Southern Adventist University
