Viking Longboats Book

Describes who the Vikings were, how they built their boats, where they traveled to, and daily life in a Viking household.

Children's Literature

Part of the "Hallmarks of History" series which uses a physical feature of the day to introduce a specific time period in history, this book focuses on the Viking Age through the unifying feature of the Viking longboat. The book does an excellent job of explaining the benefits of these amazing boats, but goes far beyond this to discuss the events of the period. There are many colorful illustrations, including a diagram of one ship being built, several photographs of museum artifacts, and a map of Viking conquests. One drawing, however, showing Native Americans in loincloths during the Viking explorations of North America, may be considered stereotypical. The book is thirty-two pages long with twelve chapters that include such information as the building of the longboats, Viking towns, family life, trading and conquests, and political structure. Each book in the series concludes with a chapter that explains what happened next; this book discusses various Viking influences that can be seen in our present society. Each book also has simplified research aids, such as an index, and a date chart that shows what was happening in various parts of the world during the time being studied. Charts and sidebars are included throughout the book where they are appropriate. The books in this series are short and contain relatively simple language and sentence structure, making them suitable for many third graders and especially helpful to older struggling readers who want to know more about the Vikings.