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

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

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.