Old Ironsides: Americans Build a Fighting Ship

By David L. Weitzman

Book Overview

She weighs in at 1,576 tons, carries 60 guns, and is made from the wood of roughly 1,500 trees. She's the largest, fastest fighting ship of her class...the Constitution. The beginnings of a fledgling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395746787
• ISBN13: 9780395746783
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.3" x 0.5" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 10 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 7

Customer Reviews

Living books at their best

Well written, this book gives a first hand account of the ship's design and building processes through the eyes of a fictional carpenter's son. Easily holding a child's attention, the story moves along steadily with quite a bit of detail. I was impressed with the way the author gave the audience a historical setting in the beginning and concluded with the famous story of how the ship acquired it's nickname in a battle.

Informative and Entertaining

I bought this book for my wife to use in the reading section of her classroom. I was originally taken by the cover art,(I am in love with tall ships), but I found the text as well as the other illustrations to be very informative and full of facts about American history that I as an adult didn't know. I would not only suggest this book for a simple history lesson but, to bring out the creative fantasy of a young mind.