"Best history books and other media for children?" Topic

My son's 6th birthday is coming up. He's a big fan of Peter the Great, Napoleon and Horatio Nelson. I've been scouring the shelves of the library and bookstores for suitable books (those with lots of pictures and diagrams are best). I've come across a few gems, but it's hard to plow through all the Goosebumps, Disney and other branded stuff to find good stuff for him.

This one on Nelson was a big hit: richardbrassey.com/?bookID=120

He also loves this cross section book:
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Can anyone recommend more history books for a 6-year-old? I'd also be interested in movies or toys if you have any good suggestions :)

thanks in advance!

The old 1950-60 era books of the ‘We were There' series of children's books. The premise was that young lads were observers or participants of major historical events.
You can get them through the inter-library loan program.

Thanks, Rudy, I'll have a look for those.

In the old days, here was a series of books under the banner of Landmark. I had many when I was a kid, and you can often get them for a dollar or two these days. In many cases these were abridge editions of adult books, like 30 seconds Over Tokyo. I think that Landmark was a component of Random House.

There is another series of larger format books loaded with pictures. I think it is called the American Heritage Library, but not all titles are in US subjects. For instance the Waterloo one is quite good and has all the famous prints.

Dorling-Kindersley (your cross-section link) do quite a lot of history stuff. My kids used to love them.

The Horrible Histories series are excellent. The facts are all correct but presented in a humorous way for kids. May be a bit Britain-centric but still entertaining! There was also a kids TV series if you can find it.

What was the book series where pictures of the battles were printing showing all the soldiers running around and firing. I remember checking the one on the Civil War almost every week just to look at the pictures.

Some google searches later…The American Heritage Picture book of the Civil War with art work by David Greenspan. There were others in the series as well.

Thanks for the great suggestions. D-K has lots of great stuff, we have several in our collection so far. I'll have a look for American Heritage and the Horrible Histories and see what I can find.

A couple of other successes include the Helion Paperboys that I found out about here on TMP. I'm currently building the RN, French and Spanish fleets for Trafalgar from that set.

Thanks again!

Definitely check out Horrible Histories…brilliant for kids (and adults). The books spawned a tv series on BBC which is probably on YouTube somewhere.

Found another winner: Peter Dennis' Paper ships and soldiers from Helion!

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