"Roanoke The Lost Colony"

Title: "ROANOKE The Lost Colony: An Unsolved Mystery From History"
Authors: Jane Yolen and Heidi Elisabet Yolen Stemple
Illustrator: Roger Roth
Publisher: Scholastic Inc, 2003
Grade: 3-5
Genre: Informational

"Roanoke" begins with a little girl who says that when she grows up she wants to be a detective just like her dad. She calls these open cases "unsolved mysteries from history." For each mystery, she collects as much information about the case as she can. She keeps a notebook which acts as her timeline. She then begins the story about Roanoke. She begins with the first people who came to the colony and then goes through the time period of the Roanoke Colony. It talks about the Indians and then eventually gets to the birth of Virginia Dare. The story ends with a picture of her notebook and what she thinks really happened.

I enjoyed this book. I think it was better for me because there was a little girl telling the story and there were even pictures of the notebook pages on the pages of the book. I loved how at the end, Yolen had two pages that were devoted to summing up what students learned through the book. It also gives the different theories that people have come up with over the years. I liked the copyright page because it gave a Bibliography and Web Sites that students could use to find out more information about the Roanoke Colony. The illustrations throughout this book are really good. It looks as though the people are really there. Their facial expressions look real. Roger Roth says that the illustrations were done in several stages. First, he did tiny "thumbnail" sketches. Then he expanded on these sketches and made the prints larger. He made pencil drawings and then traced them onto watercolor paper. Then he went back and painted the pictures using transparent watercolors, adding pencil for detail and texture.

I would definitely use this book in my classroom. It would be a great study for American history because it talks of Roanoke (the lost colony) and Virginia Dare, the first child born in America to English parents. I also like this book because it would allow my students to tell me which theory they think is right. I could have my students to look on the web sites that the book gives for references and have younger grades to fill out a worksheet to tell me what they found or with older students I could have them to present their information.