Context. Context. Context.

A big part of our study of history is keeping people and events straight. It doesn't do us much good to know that a decisive, history-changing battle was fought... if we can't quite remember in which century, or even which millennium, to place it!

Timelines are a big help in this. We keep a running timeline of events that we read about. To whet the kids' appetite when we first started, we put their birthdates on the timeline, and their parents', and their grandparents'! All of a sudden, history was relevant and the timeline was an exciting thing, a tool to measure all of history against one's own lifespan!

Genevieve Foster's books are another tool. She takes the lifespan of a famous figure from history and recounts what was going on in the world at various points in the man's life. We own her books about Augustus Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Captain John Smith, in addition to The World of Columbus and Sons. The latter spans the timeframe 1451 and 1537 A.D.

The book is broken into four parts, each detailing historical figures and events that happened around the world during specific parts of Columbus' lifespan:

When Columbus was a Boy in Genoa
When Columbus was in Portugal and Spain
When Columbus was Sailing from Spain
When Columbus made his Final Voyage

Each section begins with a two-page spread of people who were living, and some events that took place, during the time covered in that section, with pen and ink illustrations and a brief description of each, such as "Erasmus was Europe's most celebrated scholar" and "Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther; had his books burned" and many more, all during the final voyage of Columbus.

And then... the storytelling begins. And what a storyteller the author is! History reads like a storybook, bringing the people to life though their bones crumbled to dust centuries ago. The author infuses scenes with her imagining of the figures' thoughts and emotions, woven in and around the narration of known historical fact.

And so we don't just read the story of Columbus and incidental details about the people he had contact with, like Ferdinand and Isabella. No, we also read about what was happening elsewhere in the world at the same time, which, better than anything else we've done besides our timeline, helps us to realize who Columbus' contemporaries were. Before reading The World of Columbus and Sons, for example, I never really grasped that in Columbus' day Leonardo da Vinci was studying painting in Florence, Ivan made himself the first "Tsar" of Russia, and Martin Luther was trudging off to school, becoming a monk, standing before the Diet of Wurms, kidnapped by friends aiming to save his life, and writing books and hymns. Reading the narrative, I finally got an idea of the background behind the "War of the Roses" and the origins of the European slave trade, as well as straightening out in my head a bewildering number of kings, queens, lords and nobles who had only been memorized names and dates in my past.

We hear about historical events, about culture, about the evolution of mapmaking and publishing of books. Kingdoms rise and fall, rulers plot and scheme, explorers sail, artists create the masterpieces that will live long beyond them.

Illustrations, maps, chronologies and timelines add life, interest, and understanding to the pages, and the book is rounded out with two indexes, one of people and the second of events, places, books, maps and topics.

This is a wonderful tool for bringing history to life in the imagination of your students, and for putting the people and events of Columbus' day into proper context. Highly recommended.