Knights & Castles Exploring History Through Art

Children's Literature

The best way to get an accurate glimpse of details of life in the far past is seeing it through the eyes of someone who was there. That is the premise of this fascinating book in the "Picture That" series. Large views of Medieval paintings done by artists such as Paolo Uccello, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and the Breugels, elder and younger, are shown. Specific details like clothing, battle garb, farm tools, children's games, and activities of daily life and special events are highlighted in another version of the painting then details are enlarged and discussed in the text. The reader will get contemporary views of life at court, inside a farmhouse, on the battlefield, during a joust, along with glimpses of hunting deer, children at play, and a goldsmith at work. The book covers much more about Medieval life than its title promises. Most paintings are contemporary with the events they portray except for Jean Fouquet's "Death of Clothar I and the Division of his Kingdom" that was painted for an illuminated manuscript about an event that happened 900 years earlier. The book includes a glossary, timeline, index, books for further reading, web sites about history of Medieval Europe, castles and art of the period. 2005, Two-Can Publishing/Toucan Books Ltd, Ages 8 to 12.
—Janet Crane Barley

School Library Journal

Gr 5-7-Art and history meld with entertaining and successful results. Trail takes readers through American westward expansion, from the 1840s to the introduction of railroads. The second title discusses knighthood, the peasantry, war, deer hunting, and so on. Throughout each book, a painting complements the topic under discussion. Then, the image is taken apart bit by bit. For example, the French 15th-century painter Jean Fouquet's Death of Clothar I and the Division of His Kingdom illustrates a fortified city. The entire composition is shown, with the dying king easy to overlook. On the next spread, where that section of the painting is viewed as a separate entity, the dagger in Clothar's neck is apparent. In both of these oversized books, framed sidebars offer biographical information about the artists; time lines handily sum up the years covered and include black-and-white miniatures of the paintings. These unique, well-thought-out titles are good for reports, and browsers would enjoy them, too.-Anne Chapman Callaghan, Racine Public Library, WI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.