One of the first “explorers” books about Christopher Columbus that my five-year-old son and I read for our homeschooling history year was Stephen Krensky’s early reader Christopher Columbus: Explorer and Colonist (originally published 1991). This was just what an early reader needs for nonfiction: easily accessible text, just enough information, and not too many pages. My son (who is already a strong reader for kindergarten!) even read this aloud to his little sister at one point (she is nine months old, by the way).
Christopher Columbus is a celebrity that is easy to find books about. There are picture books, early readers, and chapter books about him. My son loves him, and I honestly don’t know why. This is odd since the majority of the books I chose to focus on with him are decidedly anti-Columbus, or at least not overly full of praise. I have strong feelings that Columbus does not need to be deified, and even my little guy needed to know how horrible a person he was. I feel like Krensky’s early reader book was straightforward, and it did seem accurate as well as appropriate for the age of the reader.
