Story of the World, Vol. 2: History for the Classical Child: The Middle Ages (Second Revised Edition) (Vol. 2) (Story of the World)

PROS: Easy-to-read, fairly engaging, a good mix of history and folk stories, hits most of the big stuff. I like that it's mostly text with relatively few pictures. We supplement with DK publishing histories, which are less thorough and less-well organized, but have great pictures, so that the kids get a good sense of the look of things as well.CONS: Def. Western-centric (though less than some of its competitors), and def. focused more on wars/politicians/history of power, and not much at all on history of ideas, art, philosophy, etc. Due to the breadth of the survey, there's little material connecting what happens in one place and time to any other.Western-centric: Bauer includes lots of material on other cultures, it's true, but most of this is through the lens of Western history. Which is fair. And she does a much better job than most other material for this age group. If you use the book as a backbone rather than a sole resource, it should mostly work out anyway. I found it necessary to also buy a) a more completist survey that I use to supplement or contextualize when random non-Western countries show up in SOTW and b) a full-on history of China. Because Bauer has the kids so engaged with text, I found sources that were comics for these things: Cartoon History of the Universe Volumes 1-7 Gonick's History of the Universe/Modern World series and Jin Lui's Understanding China through Comics series https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Chinese-Civilization-Emperor-Understanding/dp/1611720273/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510679206&sr=1-1&keywords=jing+liu&dpID=61JZ4KwqoaL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srchChina has always been a tremendous power and has influenced much of history in that part of the world, so the terse coverage it receives in SOTW makes for some problems in giving children a more coherent idea of what happened almost anywhere East of Turkey.History of Ideas: I would love to see the author in future editions make a list of resources at the end of each chapter... suggested art, music, important thinkers, scientists, etc. These are things you see in other courses of course, but as the history series tends to be the backbone for the classical education, it would simplify teaching greatly to find a short list of suggested related topics right in the text. I'm getting pretty good at balancing multiple history book (music, art, philosophy) on my desk at the same time, but I would have love to see these things more incorporated. Or, maybe a secondary textbook on history of ideas and culture? I appreciate the trickiness of organizing such a tremendous amount of information, so perhaps that would be the way to go.

I've been homeschooling my children for 16 years, and was homeschooled as a child, as well. Throughout this journey, I have not seen a more fun and engaging history text for children than Story of the World. It flows like a story (which is how I believe history is best taught) and doesn't bog down in too many details. I believe it draws students in with the excitement of history and leaves them hungering for more.I do history with all of my children at the same time, so my current students are 5, 7, 10, and 15. They all enjoy these stories, and are able to see how history is not a disconnected, unrelated jumble of names and dates, but a fascinating story that continues to this day.We use this book as one of our "spines" and supplement with lots of other books to expand the narrative (as suggested in the Activity Guide in this series). I read aloud from this book (and series) almost daily. Highly recommended!

Pros:The greatest strength of this book is that Mrs. Bauer gets to the point of what is significant about the people or events she presents. Many books tell interesting stories, but few tell why they matter. I really appreciate this facet of the book.In addition to history, the author gives simplified summaries of significant myths and literature (e.g., Beowulf, the Arabian Nights). These stories are probably one of our daughter's favorite parts of the book.Our child likes the readings.Cons:In order to give a summary that is simple enough for a child to grasp, many thing must be omitted which inadvertently distorts history, but I don't see any way around that for this level of study.Being a survey of world history, there is no connected narrative. You're in Europe one week and China another. My child finds this interesting, but I wonder if she'll retain very much of what we're studying. I would prefer a connected story of Western Civilization to World History.Conclusion:Our child enjoys the stories and the author does a good job summarizing what's significant, rather than burdening students with irrelevant minutiae. I question how much she'll retain, because each chapter is brief and moves from place to place. However, if she likes it should spark her interest in history as she gets older.We are finding supplemental readings (biographies or historical fiction) for people who I think are interesting or significant, and I recommend that for anyone who uses this book.Two other supplements we are using are Bauer's activity book - the map exercises are nicely done - and the Sonlight "Book of Time," so that we can locate people and events in time as well as place.

I am not Christian, and I was worried that this book would have a lot of Xian mythos and theological musings instead of, you know, the history of the middle ages. I was really pleased to NOT find any of that. Instead, my 10 year old daughter absolutely enjoyed the heck out of this. The content was spot on and easy to comprehend. And I loved how it made her trace the stories through a map incorporating geography. I used a world globe along with this book and I encourage you to do so too. I definitely recommend this regardless of religious affiliation. I'm going to be buying the rest of this series.