Kids - First Archaeology, First History Book Suggestions

Archaeologists Dig for Clues (Let's Read-And-Find Out Science. Stage 2) by Kate Duke. NY: Harpercollins Juvenile Books, 1997. Kids go on a dig in a field and at a laboratory, learning that archaeology is a search for clues. Archaeological terms are defined.

Eyewitness: Archeology (Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Books) by Jane McIntosh. London: DK Publishing, 2000. Introduction to archaeology covers a broad range of topics from mounds and monuments to marine archaeology.

The Magic School Bus Shows and Tells: A Book About Archaeology (The Magic School Bus) by Jackie Posner, Bruce Degen, Joanna Cole. Illustrated by John Speirs. NY: Scholastic, 1997. The Magic School Bus takes students on an archaeological dig after they can't guess what an old object is.

Mastodon Hunters to Mound Builders: North America Archaeology by Peter and Belia Nichols. Illustrated by Linda Battles-Herron and Beth Newman. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1992. Chapters about early life from the time of the early hunters to the present include "How it might have been..." stories that make the evidence more real for elementary and middle school-level readers. The book includes maps, sketches of artifacts, a glossary and list of archaeological sites to visit.

Right Here on This Spot by Sharon Hart Addy. Illustrated by John Clapp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999. While the farmer plows his field, the reader learns about people who lived or passed by there through an arrowhead, a horseshoe, a bone, a soldier's uniform button.

Who Came Down That Road? by George Ella Lyon. Paintings by Peter Catalanotto. NY: Orchard Books, 1992. Trace time back into history as a boy learns who traveled the road before him: his ancestors, soldiers, settlers, Indians and so on to the unknown.