Jacques Cartier: Exploring the St. Lawrence River (In the Footsteps of Explorers, 20)

Through Cartier's voyages, readers witness France's attempts at building empire and wealth to rebuild a strong position among European powers. Like other texts from this collection, Cartier's exploration of the St. Lawrence River, and his failed attempts at finding a northward passage, and of building a successful colony provide readers a window toward the exploration age: motives for the European presence, the importance of the northward passage, the travails of sailing, the difficulties of colonizing, and tenuous relationships with the native peoples (in this case the Iroquois of the St. Lawrence River) encountered. Likewise, this book uses a variety of text features in an effective manner: illustrations and pictures, timelines, sidebars, boldfaced words, and text boxes with supplementary information. As usual, the text provides us with additional information related to exploration. This time I was stunned at the number of new words concerning navigation. There is a description of a galleon along with vocabulary related to it; there is also the nasty picture of teeth with scurvy (I don't think I saw these on the other texts although scurvy was mentioned). Thus, the text is a great source of information on exploration, an introduction to that period, and a complementary source to a textbook on the age of exploration.

Great for student research- the information is not overwhelming. Well written and organized as are all the books in this series.

Thank you