You Wouldn't Want To Be A Crusader!: A War You'd Rather Not Fight

As a homeschool family, school is not limited to set hours or days; we have set material we do cover, and it is thorough, but we are always looking for additional material to bring parts of it alive at any time of day on any day of the week.The titles in the "You Wouldn't Want to Be A . . . " series help achieve the goal of bringing lives and times of different aspects of history to life for my kids, now ages 8 and 11, by focusing on a specific aspect of a given period of history, and do it brilliantly. I never have to assign these books as reading; I simply leave them out in plain sight, and within the half hour, the books have disappeared and so have my children.This title, "You Wouldn't Want to Be A Crusader," does not disappoint. My 11YO has read through the book three times in the first week that we owned it, and has been asking outstanding questions about the material, regarding the role religion has played in shaping history, how events during the Crusades may have shaped world politics in the Middle East today and affected relations between people of different religions in the area around Palestine, what motivates people in the intersection between religion and power and which one really rules if you are a powerful ruler trying to motivate people, and much more. He has grabbed his maps and the globe, and looked at trade routes and how land and water are located and what role the geography has played in events in the book-- all self-motivated at this point, as he is not even at this point in history yet in his formal lessons.Any book that inspires an 11YO who would like to spend his time playing MineCraft rather than study some of the time to dig so deeply into making great connections between different rulers, geography, politics, and religion during the Crusades and modern times has a VERY welcome place on my bookshelf.

As a homeschooling family, you can pick and choose what you read, especially for history and literature. We avoid secular publishers who have texts in the public schools... This is really a sugar-coated kids version, not a text - the content is touching on aspects of the life of a crusader. It's audience is obviously early elementary, but I don't really like to dumb-down history to where it's cutesy (to the point of being flat-out fallacy). It has interesting information, but I don't really want my little kids, when they become middle school aged, to feel they have been cheated from WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. Not just in the middle ages, but all throughout history.

This book is a little bit slower going than other You Wouldn't Want to books, but just as informative. It does a good job clarifying difficult vocabulary and the students always get a kick out of the pictures, which ultimately hooks them into reading the book.

My son used this book to help prepare for a presentation about life in the Medieval Ages. We love all books from this series. The kids like how they are written, I like the timeline pages & the volume of information.

Inaccurate information. I was pretty disappointed. I think the Crusaders are a bit more complex and can't be written off so easily. It was a bad piece of reporting.

This is a great book for kids at an age that can understand a little about religion and places on the globe. Supported by well known a historian, it does a good job getting the point to an understandable level for the young ones.Recommended for school libraries.

If you or your child needs help figuring out what the crusades are about this book is a great start. It works wonders in a fun way to overview a somewhat complicated period in our history. It is tastefully done. As a Catholic, it was important to me that this book not be bias. Fiona MacDonald, did a wonderful job at an age appropriate level to explain the topic in a fun way by stating the facts and was able to accomplish this without condemning a particular faith or showing bias for or against any religion. My daughter, nine years old, loved it, learned from it and we received much enjoyment from reading this book.

I bought this book because I thought that I could use it in the classroom but unfortunately it was not that type of book.It is more of a silly type comic/picture book that is presented in simple format.It gives some explanations about the Crusades but nothing in depth.

日本語では十字軍というのですが、Crusaderというのは、キリスト教の聖地奪還のための聖戦、という風に説明するのが普通です。では、よき行いであったかというと実態はそうでもなく……。という感じのことが、とてもわかりやすく説明されています。未だ、英語圏ではCrusaderが良い意味で使われていることがよくあるのですが、キリスト教の悪い面や、他の宗教の人たちからはどう見えるかということをよく考えた本です。　とはいえ、いつものこのシリーズですから、子ども向けの歴史のわかりやすい本で、準備するものはこれとこれと、途中にはこんなことがあって、という非常に具体的なことが書いてあります。　今回の主人公は１０９６年、フランスのとある騎士です。