Kids Book of Canadian Exploration

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

In spite of the fact that this book is titled Kids Book of Canadian
Exploration, it is really about Canadian explorers. The authors have
appropriately begun with references to St. Brendan, Aboriginals, and
Vikings as the earliest explorers and then moved on to the exploits of
the explorers you would expect: Cabot, Cartier, Frobisher, de Champlain,
Hudson, the Jesuits, the fur traders (Brыlé, Hearne, Pond, La
Vérendrye), Bering, and Vancouver. However, they do not distinguish
between people who explored Canada and Canadians who have been
explorers. This allows them to include a section at the end dedicated to
scientific exploration, which focuses mainly on exploration geology and
space exploration. Space exploration in particular seems out of place in
this book.

Apart from that oddity, this is a good book. The text is concise and
age-appropriate, and consists largely of brief paragraphs on specific
subjects. The excellent illustrations are bright and colourful, include
considerable detail, and give the book visual unity.

Interspersed throughout the book are thematic pages on such topics as
map-making, shipbuilding, the fur trade, and missionaries. There are
also sidebars, profiles of particular explorers, and “Did You Know?”
boxes introducing interesting facts. A time chart helps put the history
into perspective. Recommended.