Everything Castles: Capture These Facts, Photos, and Fun to Be King of the Castle!

As magnificent as the homes it describes, this catalog of medieval splendor displays dozens of castles and discusses castle architecture, defense, and daily life. The book boasts countless of the fabulous photos librarians have come to expect from this publisher, but it isn’t merely eye candy. The photos (as well as other illustrations such as computer-generated cutaways showing interiors, and reproductions of tapestries and other period art) accompany highly detailed yet accessible chunks of text. This explains, for example, what isn’t a castle, the kinds of workers it took to build the structures, what the places smelled like, and what noble children of the middle ages did for fun. Readers will enjoy the closing activities that illuminate the art of heraldry and challenge them to match real-world castles with pop-culture equivalents such as Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disneyland, and to figure out which kind of castle is right for them. A gorgeous presentation.