If You Were Me and Lived in... Renaissance Italy

I received this book from the author for the purpose of this review. All comments and opinions are entirely my own.

(Please note only half of this “review” is an actual review; the second half is strictly for the author's notes though anyone is welcome to read it :)

Once again, Carole wrote the perfect book for homeschoolers and preschools! If You Were Me and Lived in...Renaissance Italy is a book that every teacher needs as an asset in their classroom; especially when studying this period in time.

There was a lot of research done as this book was written and it is full of excellent information and vocabulary that is written on the child's level. The pictures illustrate everything beautifully and realistically and it flows just right. Though the book seems to be focused on telling the life through the eyes of a young girl (describing how dresses would fit you etc.), boys can learn just as much from it, though it is not as personal as it would be to girls.

Just like the previous book(s) in this series, If You Were Me and Lived in...Elizabethan England for example, there is a glossary at the end of the book to go deeper into vocabulary words as well as a few pages that feature real life historians from this time period.

The only reason I give this book 4 out of 5 stars, instead of the full 5 as I usually would have, is because I found on multiple pages extra words placed in sentences as well as words that were used incorrectly; making the sentences very choppy. I have a feeling that the unedited version of the book may have been accidentally printed instead of the edited so I am not going to harp on it too much, but these pages do need to be fixed. I'll list the errors that I found at the end of this review for the author's notes.

So, excluding the errors, I highly recommend If You Were Me and Lived in...Renaissance Italy to teachers (or homeschooling mom's) of students 8 and under!

Rated: * * * *

Series: If You Were Me and Lived in...Ancient Times series; 1 of 4

Errors I found:

Page 8: The Renaissance was the reawakening of human creatively (creativity should be used) after a darker time period.

Page 28: The guild was created to protect both the workers and the patrons with a set a rules (should be “a set of rules”) regulating prices.

Page 29: You lived in a house that were (should be “was”) filled with beautiful things...

Page 34: Ground mother of pearl made a beautiful iridescent powder for Mama's eyelids. (I honestly had no idea what this was until I had to look it up on Google so I know that young children will not know what “ground mother of pearl” is! Carole needs to define “mother of pearl” somewhere in the book, because if you don't know what that is, you read over it as if it is a typo, even though it is clearly not).

As I said, with this many grammar problems in one book (especially when compared to all of Carole's previous books that I've read) I highly suspect the unedited book got slipped into print so please don't hold these errors against the author; all of her previous books are very well written and this is the first book of hers that I've ever come across these problems.

Thanks so much for reading!

This review was originally posted on Literature Approved. (http://literatureapproved.wordpress.com)