My head hurts from trying to explain historical fiction to my six-year-old.
Although, to be fair, it was also occasionally difficult explaining it to junior high students. (The same students who were looking for The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, in the fiction section!)
Fridays are library days for Harper's kindergarten class and last Friday she came home with the book Welcome to Felicity's World, part of the American Girl Doll machine. (I notice that these books must be out of print, which will be distressing to my girl who received Kit for Christmas - surely we'll be on the lookout for Welcome to Kit's World thanks to the back cover adverts on the Felicity book...)
While I have not scrutinized the entire book the layout is friendly/accessible enough for a work meant to introduce children to Colonial America, but a kindergartner is definitely not the target audience for that book. In the first six pages I found myself trying to explain Loyalists vs. Patriots, the colonies, the Boston Tea Party, taxes, tar and feathering, the First Congressional Congress, freedom of religion, and why half of colonial children died before age six and how a doll in a coffin helped their siblings understand those deaths. Uh...
Fortunately I have a PTO meeting tomorrow night and Matt will have to tag in and explain the next several pages!
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