The Historian: Guides for Kids Who Like to Time Travel

You know this child. The one who stops you in the middle of a chapter to ask whether this part is true, and then wants to know how we know, and who was there, and what happened to them afterward. The one who is not satisfied when the story ends, because the story ending is where their questions begin.

If your quiz pointed you here, you have a Historian, and having one in your home is a gift. That instinct to ask what really happened is the beginning of every good historian's work. A child who wants the truth, who wonders about the people standing just outside the frame of the story, is already learning to think about evidence, perspective, and the lives of people who came before them.

What these kids need is history that has a heartbeat. Not a list of dates to memorize, but real people they come to love, living through the moments that shaped the world. And one of the best way to meet these people is through story.

I created a collection of guides that carry your family across centuries, from the banks of the Nile to the surface of Mars. Each one hands your child a story they will fall into, and history arrives while they are busy caring about someone.

You can view them all here.

Here are two paths through time.

The Ancient and Old World:

Start at the beginning with the Ra the Mighty series, all three books, where your family explores Ancient Egypt through the eyes of a pampered cat and his dung beetle friend solving mysteries in the shadow of the pharaohs. Your child studies Egyptian royalty, daily life along the Nile, and the world that built the pyramids.

Then travel forward into the medieval age with The Tale of Despereaux, where the castle at the center of the story opens studying how castles worked, who lived inside them, and what daily life looked like behind those walls.

And arrive in Elizabethan England with The Wednesday Wars, where your child meets William Shakespeare himself, the man behind the plays, and the world he was writing for.

American History:

This path walks your family through more than three hundred years of American life, told through the people who lived it.

The Courage of Sarah Noble opens in 1707, in the colonial wilderness, and introduces your child to the Native families who were already there.

Freewater takes you into the antebellum South and the Great Dismal Swamp, where real maroon communities of self-emancipated people built lives hidden in the wild.

By the Great Horn Spoon races west to 1849 and the California Gold Rush.

Harriet Tubman follows the Underground Railroad through the 1850s and the woman who kept going back.

A Little House Christmas settles into the 1870s and the westward expansion of the American frontier.

The Nerviest Girl in the World arrives in the 1910s, when moving pictures were brand new and nobody quite knew what they would become.

Sweet Home Alaska lands in 1934, in a New Deal colony carved out of the Alaskan wild during the Great Depression.

And A Rover's Story brings your family to the present, following the Mars rover mission, because exploration is still making history right now.

These guides span a mix of levels, so there is something here for a wide range of ages. You can build a route around the world that fits the ages at your table. Pick the guides that match where each of your explorers wants to travel.

Want to see one of these adventures for yourself before you commit? Download a free week from my Odder guide and travel to Monterey Bay, California, where your child explores the world of sea otters and the kelp forest they call home.