Cowboys and Coffin Makers: One Hundred 19th-Century Jobs You Might Have Feared or Fancied.

Description

96 pages
Contains Index
$25.95
ISBN 978-1-55451-068-9
DDC j331.700973'09034

Publisher

Year

2007

Contributor

Illustrations by Martha Newbigging
Reviewed by Gregory Bryan

Gregory Bryan is a member of the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

Review

Annick Press has another winner with Cowboys and Coffin Makers: One Hundred 19th-Century Jobs You Might Have Feared or Fancied, a worthy successor to the popular Archers, Alchemists and 98 Other Medieval Jobs You Might Have Loved or Loathed (2003). As with its predecessor, Cowboys and Coffin Makers is a mixture of informative, yet engaging text and quirky, humorous drawings. The book is an excellent vocabulary builder (for instance, peddler, miller, limner, chuckwagon cook, cartographer), as well as a vestibule of information about 19th-century North American life.

 

There is nothing in the Laurie Coulter text or the Martha Newbigging artwork that is suggestive of the dry, fact-laden informational encyclopedic history books that many children find off-putting. Rather, students in the upper elementary and middle school grades will enjoy this book from first page to last. This is an excellent way to share history with children and I cannot help but hope Annick does not take another four years to add another title to the series. Highly recommended.

Citation

Coulter, Laurie., “Cowboys and Coffin Makers: One Hundred 19th-Century Jobs You Might Have Feared or Fancied.,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed November 24, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/26971.