Our America...The Civil War Adventure Book review

The sixth book in the Our America series has been released!!  Once again I was asked to do a book review for the author Susan Kilbride.  I love using these books as an introduction to a history topic and it just so happens we are beginning to enter into our Civil War unit right now!  The kids love the additional fun activities that Mrs. Kilbride has on her website and we have done many of them with her other books in this series.

 One neat fact of these books are some of the characters are actual ancestors of the author that lived during this time period.  I always have the kids read the historical notes at the end of the book as additional details and facts of the story are given or explained.  For example, the story of Jim the slave, who escaped North and then returned to his master in the south and pretended he was grateful to be a slave again so that he could help his family escape, was a real documented story in history and it brought lots of discussion with my children.  Another fact that the historical notes brought to our attention was the idea that not all slave owners were farmers or plantation owners, instead they were slave owners who hired out their slaves to work for others in return for money.  Sort of like buying an investment property and living off the returns.  That was another great discussion I had with my children.

This books continues with Finn and Ginny looking for their parents who were lost in time and they end up witnessing many of the important battles of Gettysburg during the Civil War! This book is full of fun, exciting nail biting action that will hold your child's attention to the very end.  These books are geared for ages 8-13, but younger kids would be able to manage these books if strong readers.  I won't give away the ending but we were left wondering if there will be any more in this series...we certainly hope so!!

Some activities on Mrs Kilbride's website that you can do with your children to help bring the era to life include:

Taffy making ( my kids are dying to do this one!)
making snow candy
Learning how to making emergency splints and using cloth bandages
making spy balloons as well as many more hands on activities

Right now Mrs Kilbride is having a give away on her site with 5 lucky people winning a digital copy of her first book Our America series...The Pilgrim adventure.  The contest ends July 12, please go here to enter for your chance to win!

The Civil War adventure is on Amazon and can be found at this link!  You can purchase the paperback version for just $7.95 or read it free on Kindle unlimited if you have a subscription.

My kids and I have really enjoyed this historical novel series and love the many activities that go with them!

Disclosure:  I was given this book for the sole purpose of an honest review.  All thoughts and opinions were given freely and are my own opinion.