Explore with Hernando de Soto

September 15, 2016
Grades 3-6 With a peppy tone and magazine-like layout, titles in the Travel with the Great Explorers series introduce students to notable explorers and their journeys and invite them to consider what it might be like to travel with those trailblazers. In Hernando de Soto, kids will learn about his doomed search for gold in the southeastern corner of the U.S. and his savage treatment of the peoples already living there (though that part of the history is given fairly short shrift). Thanks to snappy headings and lots of graphics, each entry is undoubtedly eye-catching, although the thematicrather than chronologicalorganization is sometimes haphazard, and many facts get repeated in each section. Though the lack of a significant critical lens is a drawback, the plethora of facts, maps, and writing prompts to encourage engagement will nonetheless be illuminating.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)