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TIMESHOP TOP PICK.

BOOK: Anne Millard, A Street Through Time

Imagine being able to travel back in time from a modern city block to its origins, 10,000 years ago. Cool, huh?

This gorgeous picture book for ALL ages is a series of double-page panoramic views of the same imaginary European street from the Iron Age to the present. You will see dramatic change, and yet surprising continuities: the modern church, for example, occupies a spot used for worship for thousands of years.

Kids love the detailed and finely-drawn pictures. It's fun to spot the resurfacing of objects from the past : For example, two men in an eighteenth-century basement unearth a treasure chest that we last saw when it was buried in a Viking raid during 900 AD. The book is also refreshingly realistic, right down to characters pooping into pits.

A Street Through Time makes a fantastic gift for kids and you should expect it to quickly become well worn.

And adults will enjoy it too! I'm always making off with my son's copy...

Geraldine McCaughrean and Richard Brassey, Britannia: 100 Great Stories from British History

Each story is vibrantly and cheerfully illustrated, and lasts about 2-4 pages, ending with a sidebar that discusses the truth behind each tale. Tremendous fun! Challenging vocabulary at times (deliberately so, I suspect, and good for them) but written in such a way that it's not at all dry or off-putting. Kids don't have to be familiar with Britain or British history to find these compelling stories fun: Colonel Blood steals the crown jewels by shoving them down his trousers, the plague cuts off the village of Eyam, Dick Whittington sells his cat and makes a fortune...and much, much more. Lovely gift for any kid who loves stories.

Perfect for bedtime reading for 6 year olds, and reading by older kids.

Mary Pope Osbourne, The Magic Tree House series

I'll be honest: I'm not a huge fan of these books, which send three kids on time-travel adventures from the aforementioned tree house. They're a bit thin (characters, plot, all round atmospherics); the conflation of history with mythical beings and Arthurian legend makes me cringe (I'm no accuracy snob, but I've never been all that interested in myth, sorry); and I keep wanting more humor and general realism. But, hey, middle-aged history professors aren't the intended audience for these, and kids love them, including resistant readers.

I'm guessing that the main attraction for kids over the age of 6 must be that they can read them for themselves. Indeed, the books are often cited with glittering eyes by kids who are otherwise reluctant readers. Good enough. You may as well buy a multipack to start: Most kids get hooked, and will soon demand that their habit be fed again.

Joanna Cole, Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Ancient Egypt

Thank you, Magic School Bus people! Ms. Frizzle's book not only takes us to Ancient Egypt, but also makes the important point that (hello!) Cairo is a modern city in 2006! From the moment that Ms. Frizzle parachutes from the plane (Parents worried that kids will imitate this need to get out more...), it's a fast-moving cartoon adventure that takes kids through all you would expect: the pyramids, the sphinx, mummification (but of course) and more.

Stephanie Turnbull, Usborne Beginners: Ancient Egyptians

Every kid goes through his or her phase of being interested in gross stuff (and judging from the keen interest we adults take in the bizarre, does it ever really end?), so why not put it to good use? This book does a nice introduction to mummification for small kids.

A lovely satellite picture of the Nile, an illustrated introduction to Egyptian gods, and a glimpse at the treasure of Tutankhamun's tomb are some of the highlights of the short and sweet book, which first graders could read for themselves. As ever, this Usborne book takes kids seriously, and doesn't skimp on design.

Recommended for young readers, especially those unfamiliar with or just taking an interest in Ancient Egypt.

Book: Uderzo and Goscinny (and witty translators Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge), Asterix the Gaul

Well, why not? The cartoon adventures of Asterix, Obelix, and all the other memorable characters in the eccentric little Gaulish village are timeless classics. Thanks to their druid's development of a magic strength potion, these folks become the only area of what is now France to successfully resist Roman occupation.

Kids love the gratuitous Batman-style violence, the plays on words (not all of which they get, but that's o.k.), and the finely-drawn colorful illustrations. These books originate in France and are much loved throughout Europe, where they are translated into a bazillion languages, even Latin (my Uncle Albert, a Latin teacher in Scotland, was delighted when that one first came out!)

My well-worn childhood copies are now in the hands of my enthusiastic son, whose reading advanced light years while he read comic books this summer, and who was--in large part due to Asterix--keenly interested in Roman ruins when we visited England.

This is just the first in a very long series, so be prepared for whiny demands for more.

Book: Katie Daynes: Usborne Beginners: Romans

Per the title, this slim volume is for beginners, but the neat thing is that kids can read it themselves, at an advanced first-grade level. The majority of the illustrations are cartoons, supplemented by photos of Roman remains (kids will love the multi-seater Roman toilets!) The focus is everyday life, with double-page spreads dealing with shopping, school, work, clothes, army life, and more.

This is officially recommended for kids ages 4-8, and that's about right.

Book: The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of the Roman World

A note on the "internet-linked" part of the title: No, you can't cram the book into your jump-drive slot. It simply means that Usborne offers a website with links, not all of them easily navigable or worth navigating.

Forget the bells and whistles: The book stands nicely on its own, especially because it's well-designed, with appealing drawings and photos. It does, however, teeter on the edge of being textbooky, thanks to its comprehesive subject matter, so it is perhaps best for kids who are really into the subject.

The first half is chronological, with chapters on early Rome, the Republic, and finally, the Empire. Lots of colorful, kid-friendly maps help kids understand why and how Rome spreads its power. A fourth chapter, on everyday life, is the longest and, for girls (at the risk of stereotyping) may be the most appealing: Weddings, funerals, games, town life, country life, food, fashion, and much more. There are plenty of elaborate drawings and colorful photos as well as substantial text. After the book ties up the story with the tale of the Empire's collapse, a "Factfinder" chapter satisifes all the obsessive kids (like the ones who will grow up to be historians) with an almanac of info on dates, coins, legends, and various other subjects.

I recommend this book especially for kids who have already developed some interest in Ancient Rome. Don't be surprised or disappointed if even they seem more interested at first in the pictures than the text : Chances are, the pictures are what will bring them back to this book again and again. It's best for ages 8 and up.

Book: Terry Deary, The Rotten Romans

Kids love Terry Deary's books, even though they are oh-so-British (or maybe that's why.) Some of the American parent reviews on Amazon drive me nuts: Parents angst about the fact that their kids (gasp!) ENJOY these books! Perhaps they're inaccurate! Perhaps they're too entertaining! My reply? Fugeddaboutit. Horrible Histories are more accurate than the nicely sanitised pablum of textbooks. More importantly, they'll get your kids interested in history and world cultures, and thinking critically, all while laughing their heads off. Kids don't become educated by being bored into submission, and Terry Deary proves it again and again in Britain, where his books are HUGE...

Great example is this delightful volume that leaves you in no doubt about how rotten the Romans were: feeding Christians to the lions and all that.

Book: DK Eyewitness Books: Castle

No, it's not hilarious or silly, but like all the DK series, it is very, very cool. It gives readers a vivid sense of the texture of everyday life, including a sense of the violence that drew people to take shelter within castle walls.

The book is not patronizing, but written knowledgably and well for kids. It's a coffee table book in style, but with real substance underlying the selection of pictures and in the text.

Fantastic illustrations (high-resolution glossy color photos of landcsapes, castles, real artifacts, models) and superb design.

Kids are drawn by its vivid colors, and close-up look at axes, cannons, costumes, cookware, and, of course, castles. I especially appreciate that, although Europe is the main focus, the book also devotes pages to medieval Japanese castles, so that kids can see that Europe doesn't have a monopoly!

Activity Book: Iain Ashman, Make This Medieval Castle

Now, there's an invitation it's hard to resist!

Truly, this will take some good skills with an Xacto knife and dedication to detail, but determined kids will probably succeed..

....in persuading an adult to do this project for them.

I suggest you give it to the father of the child as a gift, OR to the medieval-mad child of someone you don't like. I love looking at our copy (it is fabulous) but I gotta admit, it's still in the book...as are the Medieval Town, Cathedral, etc, to go with it. I'm waiting for the day when I'm laid up with two broken legs, when they will all come in very handy.

TIMESHOP TOP PICK.

Book: Eyewitness: Medieval Life

Lovely! A book about life in the Middle Ages that goes beyond the castle walls to (hello!) where most people actually lived!! Teeny tiny print means that the text is aimed at older kids, BUT there are loads of yummy eye candy here in the form of fabulous glossy, high-resolution graphics of everything from costumes, furniture, kitchen utensils, swords, and kings, to food, musical instruments, stained galss, and, oh, all right, the usual knights in shining armor. Kids love to look at the pictures, and there's nothing wrong with that!

I recommend ages 4 to adult.

Book: Usborne Books, The Great Castle Search

The Great Castle Search is one of those enormously fun picture books where you have to spot lots of people and objects in the wonderfully detailed illustrations on each double page. The devilishly drawn picture of an early castle built by William the Conqueror (it looks suspiciously like the first-ever Windsor Castle) invites you to find the Saxon construction worker falling off the scaffolding. This neatly helps reinforce the point in the very brief text that the Normans (winners) forced the Saxons (losers) to do slave labor.

This is just one of about a dozen "spotting" activities on the first double-page spread, and it's absorbing, challenging stuff. The pictures focus on specific parts of the castle (such as the bailey, where people worked), specific events (such as a feast) and the castle's functions as home, fortress, and workplace. The book also briefly steps away from Europe to show castles in Japan and India. In historian mode (as opposed to mom mode), I'm thrilled that the book ends with a spread on romantic 19th century castles, cheerfully pointing out how many of the castles that dot the modern European landscape are actually barely more historical than Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyworld (that's my favorite fake castle, by the way...) The book gives kids a real feel for chronological change in the life and definition of the castle. Plus it's tons of fun.

Book: Terry Deary, Horrible Histories: The Terrible Tudors and the Slimy Stuarts

From Henry VIII chopping off people's heads to Charles I getting his head chopped off, there's plenty to entertain the most discerning nine-year-old. This is British history, but it's material that resurfaces in popular culture again and again (Henry's six wives are just one example.) This is also the England that produced the American colonies (The failed Roanoke colony was created under Tudor Elizabeth I, Jamestown and Plymouth were both started during the reign of the first Stuart king, James I.) Best reason to read it? Terry Deary makes the most out of one of the most colorful periods of English history: It's not all heads being chopped off, but that helps.

Activity Book: Terry Deary, The Terrible Tudors Sticker Book

Even the most reluctant reader will get into this! You do NOT need to have read The Terrible Tudors (above) to thoroughly enjoy this book. Most of the activities here are played with stickers, including silly quizzes whose point (slyly) is to enlighten, not test. There are also two street scenes on the inside cover, which kids can tastefully decorate with stickers of people throwing muck from windows, preparations for an execution, etc, etc. You get the idea. My son loved it.

Book: Jamila Gavin, Coram Boy

What a fantastic read! Shame the American publisher's cover is so unhip.

This award-winning novel is a story of the eighteenth century, a brutal time (well, at least by 21st century standards) when people on both sides of the Atlantic bought and sold other people without a second thought. But there was a glimmering of social conscience: Captain Thomas Coram, for example, was an English sea captain who had made his fortune building ships in Massachusetts, and was shocked to find abandoned babies in the gutters on his return home to London. He founded an orphanage, Coram's Hospital.

This, however, is simply the back story. The novel is really about the continued exploitation of kids: Otis, a travelling conman, promises desperate mothers that, in exchange for payment, he will deliver their babies to Coram's Hospital. In reality, he and his son Meshak murder the infants, but Otis is eventually caught and hanged. Two lucky orphans, who actually do make it to Coram's Hospital in one piece, are the focus of the rest of the book: Aaron (the circumstances of whose illegitimate birth is traced in the first half of the book) and Toby, the child of an enslaved African who was en route to the Americas. But how did they get to safety at Coram's? And who is the cruel Mr. Gaddarn?

The recommended age for this book on Amazon.com is 12, partly because it's a challenging read, and mostly for its subject matter. If your kid (or you) wouldn't be unduly traumatized by a sympathetic, moral, and intelligent telling of a story that hinges on illegitimate birth and infanticide (and you might be surprised how many kids wouldn't), then give it a go. On the British Amazon site, one child reviewer wrote, "I am 12, I loved this book, and I have a nine year old sister who, although some of it went over her head, also thought it was brilliant!"

By the way, this novel (which has won serious awards) was turned into a play at London's National Theatre recently. Just thought you might like to know.

Book: Terry Deary, The Vile Victorians Activity Book

Book: Annette Laing, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (Book 1 of The Snipesville Chronicles)

Yes, I know, total chutzpah, listing my own book. But, hey, I wrote what I wanted to read, so of course I like it. :-) Here's the blurb from the cover:

What a nightmare. Hannah Dias, California Girl with Attitude, and Alex, her laid-back brother, have moved from exciting San Francisco to boring Snipesville, Georgia. Life doesn't improve when they meet Brandon, a dorky kid who is plotting his escape from the Deep South, and the weird Professor, who has a strange secret. Suddenly, the kids are catapulted thousands of miles and almost seventy years to England during World War Two. They fall into a world of stinging nettles, dragon ladies, bomb blasts, ugly underwear, stinky sandwiches, painful punishments, and non-absorbing toilet paper. They learn so much more than they could ever learn in a history class. Not that they want to learn it. But they can't go home unless they find George Braithwaite, whoever he is, and whatever it is that he has to do with Snipesville.

Here's what a few of the kids who read the advance draft have to say:

Hannah Salway (age 11) from Birmingham, U.K.: "It was Brilliant!!"... Breanne Dykes (11) from Savannah, GA: "I loved it!!! I did not lose interest at all, and the characters seemed real, which kept my interest."... Rebecca G. of Nottingham (UK) has read it three times, while Amelia in Sacramento has read it FIVE times. Gosh. Oh, and it's NOT only for girls: The boys who read it loved it, too, including Ryan D. (9) and Fielding Keeley (12) in Statesboro, GA.

Now here's the bit I never, never tell kids: They learn a lot from this book about British life during two world wars, about how childhood changes over place and time, about thinking historically, and about the cultural threads that link Britain and America. Best of all, they don't even realize it at the time. This, of course, was all part of my cunning evil plan...BWAHAHAHAHA!

Want to check it out before you buy? Please download the first two chapters FREE on my web site, www.AnnetteLaing.com . You can order autographed copies directly from the site. If enough kids like it, I get to write another one, which would please me enormously. If you or your kid don't like it, I want to hear from you, because I'm happy to hear how I could have done better.

Book: Peter Hepplewhite, An Evacuee's Journey

Kids who have been to TimeShop: Wartime England (or who have seen the Chronicles of Narnia, or read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe) will be intrigued by the experiences of wartime evacuees. What was it like to be sent off to live with total strangers in a strange environment? A nicely straightforward book, with lots of photos, that gives kids some real insight into the lives of wartime evacuees in Britain.

DVD: Carrie's War (BBC/Masterpiece Theatre DVD)

Ignore the Masterpiece Theatre title. This is a grand version of a classic English children's novel, which was first published in the 1970s, and loosely based on author Nina Bawden's real experiences as a wartime evacuee. Carrie and Nick Willow are a brother and sister who are sent out of London to escape German bombing raids. They find themselves staying in the countryside with seriously scary Mr. Evans (whom Nick fearfully describes as an ogre), and his timid sister, Lou, who, we might say today, has low self-esteem.

Myself, I thought the 1970s BBC version was better at grabbing the "feel" of 1940s England, but since it's no longer available, this will do. That said, this version's particular strength is that it draws out Bawden's serious point that adult lives and characters are not easily reduced to caricature--a point she makes with subtlety and sophistication, not moralizing and preachiness. Two thumbs up (both of mine!)

TIMESHOP TOP PICK.

Book: Nina Bawden, Carrie's War

I loved this novel as a kid, and I'm happy to see that it's still popular in England today. The story of Carrie Willow and her brother Nick, wartime evacuees from London to the remote Welsh countryside, speaks to the fears and anxieties of childhood, and the ways in which kids attempt to intervene in adult lives, with mixed results. Nina Bawden is a terrific author: Like J.K. Rowling, she *gets* kids, and she writes for them, not at them. Here's a great article for adults about Nina Bawden's life and work: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1089329,00.html

Kids enjoy the feeling of sharing the journey of wartime childhood evacuation with Carrie and Nick, and they get a very real sense of what it felt like to be evacuated to a new life, and then wreched back to the old one. It's not a bad idea to pair this with Peter Hepplewhite's book, above.

Book: Vince Cross, Blitz

Very few kids' writings survive through the ages, and rarely does anything like Anne Frank's diary become a published classic. This is, then, a fictional first-person account written by "Edie Benson", a child who lives through the bombing raids of London during World War II. It captures quite well the texture of working-class London life, and the terror endured by those who lived through the Blitz. I would suggest this as "further reading" for any kid who is already hooked on the subject.

DVD: Doctor Who: The Empty Child

How did that get in here??? Simple: Any kid who has been reading about Wartime England will be able to connect to and enjoy this episode of the newly resurrected family sci-fi series from the BBC. If you remember the cheesy Doctor Who episodes of the past, don't. These new episodes retain the soul of the original, but with new sophistication to acting, sets, and scripts. The result that Doctor Who is one of the most popular TV series of the past two years in the U.K.

The Empty Child, which features on this DVD, is pretty scary (but NOT gory) Why is everyone running terrified from the forlorn child in the gas mask, calling for his mother, in the middle of the Blitz?

Doctor Who has always treated kids with respect, and now more than ever. American kids who get the WWII Britain references will feel very proud of themselves, as they enjoy this hip and happening show.

I recommend for ages 8 and up, although my British-American niece and nephew enjoyed them at ages 7 and 6, respectively.

DVD: Back Home

A British girl is evacuated to America as war begins in 1939...and does not return until 1945. Based on the novel by Michelle Magorian (sadly out of print in the U.S.), this is a great way for older kids to understand the effects of the war on families. Alas, this version (unlike the earlier and unavailable Disney version with Hayley Mills, which is suitable for younger kids) focuses on several people, all of them adults, not just the newly returned child, Rusty. All the same, it gives a good idea of the cultural gulf between 1940s Britain and America, and the deprivations of wartime life in England.

This is unrated, but I'd certainly give it a PG for several things, including a few nudge-nudge wink-wink references among the adults, and the depiction of a woman who's pregnant by her boyfriend, only to learn that her husband (missing, assumed killed) has survived the war. (Oops. ) If you are an ESP (Easily Shocked Parent), you may give it a miss. Which is a shame.

Book: Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen, Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Imperial China

Thank heavens for the Magic School Bus people! They have done wonders exciting American kids about science, and now they are turning their talents to world history! Given the pathetic state of history written for kids in America, it's a shame that they haven't bitten the bullet and produced a fun book on American history, but you can't have everything...

Ms. Frizzle and her class have an adventure in China a thousand years ago. The book is in cartoon style (hooray!) and includes step-by-step illustrations on rice-growing and (here's a practical skill for kids) chopstick usage, among other things. Nice gentle sense of humor (Arnold bangs his head on the floor -hard- while kowtowing, for example!), and familiar characters for kids.