The Ancient Maya (A True Book: Ancient Civilizations) (A True Book (Relaunch))

A wonderful film.

I ordered several books on the Maya & haven't had time to fully read this one, but have skimmed it. But based on another review, I did look at the pictures before I shared it with my kids. These are not illustrations: much of the artwork is photographs of ancient sculptures, wall paintings and masks. These are how the ancient Mayans depicted themselves, not how a modern artist has drawn them. There is one illustration that looks like it is modern, but it is describing ancient Mayan society & is very much in keeping with the style of the photographs of the original artifacts. Other than that one illustration, the photos that are not of artifacts are of modern Mayan people, housing, or ruins of Mayan sites. My skim of the text is that it seems very informative & I like that they give pronunciation of difficult words. It looks like a colorful, informative book that I look forward to reading with my kids. I think for the price & the attention span of the intended audience, it seems very good.

This resource was a significant part of my unit with the same content. I teach the gifted and talented students. I wanted to enrich my student's learning, and I could do that with the help of this workbook. Not to mention that it was easy to add an extension project to their learning.

We wanted a book to read with our kids before visiting the Chichen Itza. This was perfect for our 8 year old. We read it to her at bedtime before our trip and it helped a lot.

My family likes to travel. My husband and I are both really into ancient meso American civilizations. We have been to many ruins. This book does a good job of giving the basics about Mayan culture that a child can understand. Definitely recommend it for anyone who wants to enrich their child’s experience of visiting these sites. Beyond hearing the guide clap and cause the chamber echos in the temples, it can be boring for kids giving them (and yourself) a little knowledge prior to going will help them focus and look for certain things.

I love the True Books series! They have great pictures and pack a lot of useful information into a small, attractive book. Definitely recommend!

Very informative and educational book, with nice, colorful pictures, easy to understand.

I purchased the book, thinking that I would learn something about this rich culture from the voices of its inhabitants. Instead, its the work of a person who is profiting from the culture of a people, not thoroughly knowing them or living among them. Just an exploiter who visited and having taken ( or captured )some outdated photos (probably while on a short visit) and wrote a book ,as if she had lived among these people and shared their history and suffering for years.

A cute book with an approachable tone for kids. I'm using it with my 4 year old to help him understand what I study. However I had to edit the book to fix several issues. Various 'facts' in the book are not quite right, eg many dates are wrong or misunderstood. Some 'facts' are totally wrong. Several of the images show fake artifacts, tourist tat things. Tikal altar 5 is presented as a calendar (...it actually depicts the disinterment of human bones!). A sculpture of the Aztec agricultural goddess Chicomecōātl is presented as the Maya maize god. Etc. These don't sink the book, it's a nice idea, but the publisher should have hired a Maya archaeology grad student to check it. It took me 15 minutes with a red pen to fix it.

Although the book is made for readers older than my grade 1s and 2s, I was able to read aloud excerpts from the book which lead into student inquiry based discussions for my Mexico unit.

Perfect for the new Primary NC. This little book has been very popular with my year 3/4 class. Just the right level of detail, with super photos, covering all aspects of Mayan life.

Went to Mexico... My kids were super excited about learning more about the Maya... My boys are 5 and 7...

The recommended reading level of 7-9 years is probably accurate, but content-wise it did not offer enough detail for Year 5 subject work (e.g. in the section on religion only one God is named.)