Siege!: Can You Capture a Castle?

Step Into History

by Julia Bruce, Peter Dennis (Illustrator)

"Find out how to successfully plan and lay siege to a castle to defeat the enemy"--Provided by publisher.

Genres: Childrens, History

32 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Jennifer Heise · Rating 5 out of 5]

We have now read this four times in a week. I wasn't expecting my six year old to glom onto this with such a level of enthusiasm, but considering that we read Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Medieval Castle a number of times a year ago, I think this story of the other side of a siege, with lots of gadgets and technology explained, is a good foil. Basically, the story says, you have been appointed by the king to halt the rebellious activities of noble lord, possibly by negotiation -- though that fails-- and if necessary by force of a siege against his castle. (Spoiler, you end up breaching the castle wall and winning.)

There are places I'm a bit iffy about the text (did foot soldiers really wear only cloth and sometimes chainmail armor? What about boiled leather, or just leather? Who wore chainmail?) but for instance I checked on the 'hanging a mattress in front of a battering ram' defense and it's allegedly mentioned in Vegetius' De Re Militari Also some of the dating on the castle design I wonder about. However, jamming together time periods within 100-200 years in a kids book is not unheard of. We especially liked the explanations of the beseiger's camp, of how to undermine a wall, and what the moveable penthouse was and how it worked. Note: there are cutaway views embedded in some scenes, such as the inside of the battering-ram cover-- these are nice, but you will need to be aware that they are there as it's easy to think they just a normal part of the picture. My son enjoyed the descriptions of the siege engines and different kinds of archery; the illustrations were clear without being blueprints.

There are lots of pictures with labels, so if you hate to read labels aloud, confine this one to the older kids; however, the use of the labelled pictures to move the information along is pretty masterly. (A few cases where background/type color conflicts make it hard to read the text do crop up, but only 2-3.) A nice glossary, but I would have been happier with a better list of resources at the end.

Overall, definitely a keeper for the SCA reader or medieval stuff school unit.

[Duane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for any youth non-fiction collection! With amazing illustrations, young readers will be thrown into the mix of how different armies went about not only attacking a castle, but how best to defend it. The text is easy to understand and the action is throughout the book. A great book for any knight, castle, medieval fan.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a favorite of my 7 yr old. He requested additional titles from the series.