Carole P. Roman Book Reviews -- A New TOS Review!!

We are a bunch of readers so when we found out we could get 3 books from the Carole P. Roman books and collections. I asked my 3 children what books they thought would work best for us and they picked 2 from Carole P. Roman's If You Were Me and Lived In... historical series and then one from A Captain No Beard Story called The Crew Goes Coconuts, volume 6 in the series.

It was hard to choose from the 11 historical ones but we narrowed it down to areas of history we were already learning about. We chose a book from the Captain No Beard Story series that deals with the subject matter of bullying since that is an area we are experiencing in playtime in the neighborhood with other children.

While I was researching all the books we could choose from I read that Carole actually began writing on a dare from her son! Her first book was An Imaginary Tale of a Pirate's Life, the first in the Captain No Beard series, which is based on an imaginary game Carole played with her grandson. This book and others have won a myriad of awards including some Blue Ribbon Awards from the Homeschool Review Crew in 2016 and 2015 IAN Book of the Year Award Finalist as well as others. What a great result from a dare!!

So as I previously said we chose because the author was dealing with the subject of bullying in a way that elementary children could both understand and relate. Both the main characters in the whole Captain No Beard series are based on her grandchildren.

In this particular volume - The Crew Goes Coconuts, Matie the goat is being bullied by Mongo the Monkey, Linus the Lion, and Polly the Parrot. Haille and Cayla are the ones trying to stand up for Matie and show the others how their words and actions have caused heartache to Matie and made her feel unwanted. I liked that there was a strong character presentation for both the bullies and those standing up against those actions. This is exactly how I would want each of my children, especially my son who is 9, to react in these types of situations.

The book is 44 pages long and was read totally by my son. even though he is a late reader, with some help he was able to sound out most of the words in the story, which made it more appealing to him. The other two books I will be talking about had to be read to him, but in time I'm sure he will be reading those on his own as well. He also really enjoyed the illustrations. My mother was the one who read the book with him the first time on a day she came over to hang out with us. She loved the story too!

The first book we chose from Carole's historic series was If You Were Me and Lived In... Colonial America. Arianna, my eldest read this one as her "main" one. Her favorite parts lie between pages 29 - 36 (out of 61 pg. book) because it talks about how they grew their food, how they preserved it, and what they had as meals. They also talked about the Wampannog Indian tribe and how they taught the colonists how to hunt and trap as well as planting corn so you could live.

 

The words on the page are perfect for reading books aloud - a slight bit larger then other books, which I was happy to see. After the reading pages there is a 2 page spread that shows cartoon drawings of the famous men and woman of the time. Then after those pages you will find a 6 page Glossary. That will be most helpful for my younger 2 children when they come across words that are hard to pronounce or that they just do not know.

The last book we chose was If You Were Me and Lived In...Renaissance Italy. It was chosen by my younger daughter mainly because of all the artists that were prominent figures in the Renaissance. We are also learning about this time period in our history studies so it went right along with what we were going to be studying.  Audrie loved finding out what her name may have been if she was born in that time period. Her favorite was Dolce (which means sweet). She also read about the Medici family and how influential they were and that they supported some of her favorite artists Michelangelo and Raphael.

Audrie also enjoyed the pictures, especially later in the book when they describe the billowing dresses made from silk and brocade. It also detailed the steps of getting dressed, but confessed she wouldn't want to wear all the layers because here in SC she would be scorching hot all the time. LOL! 

One thing I discovered was that the harder words were broken down into syllables so that helped her when reading on her own. Then she could find that word in the back in the Glossary if she wanted more information. In the back of this book were many famous people of the Renaissance who resided in Italy. You really felt like you had travelled back in time and were a part of history. This series is written for ages 8 - 15 and all of my children enjoyed the stories.

There are so many more books from the Carole P. Roman books and collections and I implore you to click the link below to read all the reviews from the Crew. There are 2 whole series I didn't even get to check out myself, which I will be soon! They are called Oh Susannah: It's in the Bag and are set of short and easy chapter book series. There is also the cultural series which go to countries like Australia, India, and Peru! Can't wait to check them out. Also be sure to check out Carole P. Roman on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube!