Excellent picture book for a peek into the middle ages!

books:

	• I Wonder Why Castles Had Moats: and Other Questions About Long Ago (I Wonder Why) Miranda Smith Kingfisher, 2004 - 32 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Excellent picture book for a peek into the middle ages!

Both my children (ages four and nine) love this book! It has great visuals and excellent explantions about questions kids ask. Of course, they loved reading about how people didn't bath and threw their waste out the windows! They argue over who gets to read it in the car. We paid much more for the book in England! I would also recommend this book for older students (grades 4-8) with limited reading abilities

I wonder why there were no Jews in the Middle Ages

The illustrations are wonderful. But every culture in the world, from Incas to Arabs to Englishmen, get at least one illustration and one explanation. There's an illustration of a church, a minaret and a Moslem school. Jews were a strong presence in the Middle Ages throughout the world, so the omission is glaring. I suppose the striking difference would be the extent to which Jews approached a near-100-percent literacy, even then. But given that the merchant who might have sold the cloth to that woman with the cone-shaped hat might have been Jewish, perhaps it would have been truly illustrative of Medieval life, since Jews were required to wear distinctive clothing wherever they went.

The effect is to show a book with deficiencies.

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"Why did churches have steeples?", "Who wore platform shoes?", and "Did people take baths?" are just some of the tricky questions answered in this delightful book about long ago.