Guts & Glory: The Vikings

I have mixed feelings about this book. Honestly, I picked this up because one of my kiddos is working through Viking history, and I thought this might be a little fun reading. The structure is set in a way that you can read for short periods and still get a full story of a person. The asides, like the “Know Your Viking and grey parts (example: “The Moo of Insanity” on p. 106) give bite sized facts in a creative way and break up the text.

The actual treatment of the history and mythology was lacking in three ways: 1) it is difficult to distinguish between the author's jokes and actual history especially due to the somewhat comical names of people; 2) even with jokes, the text is dry and gets tedious - tough for the target audience; and 3) the author clearly knows his stuff, but claims that things don't make sense (like why Baldur can only die in such unusual circumstances) that have explanations.

I recommend folks browse this book. The asides are great, and interested readers can pick and choose based on the chapter titles to read the parts that work for them. I would also recommend that parts of it could be read as an introduction to an in-depth exploration of a topic. I would not; however, just assign this as reading for a middle schooler and expect them to enjoy it.