The North Carolina Colony

Children's Literature

The "Our Thirteen Colonies" series is designed to provide elementary to intermediate grade readers an illustrated glance at the early history of the original states that merged together to form the United States. In this entry of that series, author Judy Alter presents the colonial history of North Carolina. In order to accomplish this task in thirty or so pages the author provides a skeletal outline of several centuries worth of history. Although the topic seems too vast for such a concise format, surprisingly, this book works. Alter uses a very abbreviated writing style to tell the tale of the original Native American population of North Carolina, the emergence of European settlers, North Carolina's involvement in the Revolutionary War, and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. All of this history is compressed into the little book alongside numerous illustrations of the period. Even with this "once-over-lightly" approach to history, younger readers are afforded a nice introduction to the early history of North Carolina. They will come away from Ms. Alter's book with both a beginning point for further study and a reasonable introduction to the colonial history of North Carolina. 2004, The Child's World, Ages 8 to 10.
— Greg M. Romaneck