The Little Book of Monarchs Review

When I was younger, I loved history. In fact I would go as far as saying it was one of my top 3 favourite subjects. I was always interested in finding out about things that happened all them years ago. I never took it further than GCSE level and this is something that I do regret now but will maybe one day study it again. Callum is very much like me and loves history too. He is now at an age where they are learning about certain parts of history and with each new school year they cover many different topics. We were recently sent a copy of The Little Book of Monarchs to review and Callum has found it both interesting and very useful.

The Little Book of Monarchs is priced at £7.99. It is written by Tony Boullemier and illustrated by Adrian Teal. "Tony wrote ‘The Little Book of Monarchs’ as a response to the falling standards of history teaching in schools. He feels that less and less time is devoted to the subject and that children are often offered only two or three significant periods to study. Tony believes school children are simply not getting a proper perspective, and hopes to address this by taking the reader chronologically through the ages".

The book is set out into 11 chapters. Each chapter is about each set of monarchs for example, The Normans, The House of York, The Tudors and The Windsors. 

Each King or Queen has a double page to themselves. What I like about the book is that there is always a funny picture on the left page. The right page has 3 or 4 useful facts about them. I like that there isn't pages and pages of information about each monarch too as I really don't think children need to much information at once. In Callum's case a little bit of information is easier stored than a whole lot of text. This way he is learning what is important about each one instead of just a lot of waffle.

I think the book is aimed at older primary school aged children certainly no younger than Callum (who is 8) but it would also be a useful book to older school children too as it contains all the information about each of the monarchs both concisely and chronologically. It is a great book that could be very useful especially if they have left their homework until the last minute.