Tuesday, October 22, 2013

How The Settlers Lived by George Laycock

book cover
How The Settlers Lived
by George & Ellen Laycock


ISBN-13: 978-0679206842
Hardcover: 113 pages
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Released: May 12, 1980

Source: Bought in a library used book sale.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
Describes the living conditions, homes, clothes, and recreation of early Western settlers. This fascinating account of frontier days is accompanied by many detailed drawings and depicts settler's daily lives--how they reached the West, how they cleared and cultivated the land, how they built and cultivated the land, how they built and furnished their log cabins, how they made their clothes, weapons, and utensils, and more.


My Review:
How The Settlers Lived is a children's book about how the American frontier families in the early 1800s lived. The book appears to be aimed at juvenile readers. The text gave an overview of a number of topics but, while interesting, the details within a topic were brief. I remember my mother reading the Little House on the Prairie series to me when I was young, and I learned much of this information and more from those books.

Young readers interested in the topic will probably find this book interesting and informative. About half of the pages are drawings illustrating some aspect of daily live that is talked about in the text.

The book covered how they traveled West, how they made their homes (and described several types of homes, like a log cabin and a soddy house), how they furnished their homes, how they cleared and farmed the land, hunting, what they wore, doctors and illness, and what they did for fun.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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