The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia,   ISBN:9780753457849

Customer Rating: 

A good buy for us! We bought this to supplement the series: The Story of the World by Susan Bauer. It is easy to ready, plenty of pictures and TONs of information.

Customer Rating: 

This book is a world history organized by time. So, the page after ancient greek history is the Shang Dynasty in China. THis could have been a very powerful approach, if the selections had been better organized and had better lead-ins to subsequent pages. But instead it is almost confusing and definitely hard to use as a page-turner for an interested kid. It is easier to progress from ancient greek history to classical greek history than from ancient greek history to chinese history.
Having said that, the pictures are satisfactory and generate interest in my 6 yr old. So, if you receive this as a gift, don't toss it out. But don't purchase it either.

Customer Rating: 

I purchased the Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World for our home school program this year. It is a wonderful reference book, and we use it not only for school subjects, but also in everyday conversations, when something comes up about history that we're not sure of. We run to the shelf to see what the IHW has to say. I decided to look for this older edition as opposed to purchasing the newer edition (Kingfisher History Encyclopedia) after reading reviews and noticing the differences between the two. As an additional note for those who teach from a biblical worldview, this volume does not support a Creation/Flood model, but includes the first chapter as being 40,000-500 B.C., The Ancient World. This does not, in my opinion, necessitate throwing out the rest of the book, but maybe opens up a discussion with older students of differing opinions of early history that arise without knowledge of the truth of God's Word. I appreciate the broad global scope of the historical events included in the book, since I find most American history texts very Western-centric. Definitely a worthwhile investment in any household!

Customer Rating: 

I too homeschool in a classical mode. I originally bought this due to the reference in The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (Revised and Updated 10th Anniversary Edition). It is a useful introduction to unfamiliar ground. Non Western topics are often unfamiliar to me and I find the snippets given along with the timeline context enough of a start that I can take it from there. Would it be the only text I would use? Definitely not. However, it is a fleshed out outline of the topics and a good road map when outlining a course of study.

Customer Rating: 

If you're looking for a detail oriented history book this is not the one, nor is it Pro Western Civilization as if the rest of the world did not exist. This book is concise and picture oriented. It attempts to say what happened around the world in general. Each Major time period starts with "the world at a glance" and ends with a summery of the accomplishments in Arts, Architecture and Science and Technology. Mainly geared for 12-15 year olds or adults who want a synopsis. I use this book to supplement science students in grade 8-9 that I tutor, so that they are not ignorant about history nor that they conceive science as something that materialized just recently in the life of a young person.