Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book is used by the Calvert School, a day-school and homsechooling curriculum company based in Maryland. It is because the Calvert curriculum is superior in every other subject (math, science, literature) that the history book sticks out like a sore thumb. "A Child's History of the World" is as bad (or perhaps worse) than the "history" my daughter endured from Calvert in 3rd grade. Here is an example from page 5: "...before this, there was a time when there was NO WORLD AT ALL! No world at all! Only the stars, and God, who made the stars." You've got to be kidding me. If you're trying to market your Calvert Homsechooling program as non-religious (which they do), you're going to want to take the references to God out of the history book and put it in a religion book where it belongs. Also, they might want to think about removing the cross next to Christ's notation from the timeline on page xxi. It's a bit Christo-centric, especially since I don't see any other world religious figures on the timeline with their religious symbol next to their names (i.e. Mohammad, Siddhartha Gautama, etc.) My other strong objection is the Euro-centric focus of this book. A child reading this book would think that nothing ever happened in any other part of the world except Europe since the beginning of time. I noticed this bias in last year's "history" as well. Where are the underground terra cotta armies of the Shang dynasty? Where is the contribution of Arabic mathematicians of the concept of zero? Where is the discussion of Africa-the birthplace of our most ancient ancestors? This book should be retitled "A Child's History of European Civilizations and Christianity."