You Wouldn't Want To Be... Without These Books!

The You Wouldn't Want To Be series makes history into something a bit more fun than you might remember from your school days. Certainly they're more interesting than anything I was given as a child. I was firmly convinced - until age 16 or so, when a wonderful teacher convinced me otherwise - that history was dreadfully boring. If only they'd had a series like this!

Aimed at grades 3-6, this series, which takes the reader through some of history's most dangerous, difficult and just plain gross episodes, is good enough to be used as part of the standard history curriculum in many British primary schools. Yet it is appealing enough - with plenty of colorful cartoon-style art and humor - that my students clamor to read them just for fun.

Check them out at your local public library and find out why you too wouldn't want to be a polar explorer, a Victorian servant, a crusader, a builder on the Great Wall of China, and (as they say) much, much more!