Get ready for another gruesome trip through history featuring Guy Fawkes! Slimy Stuarts covers from the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 through to 1714 when the last of the Stuarts passed away. It’s a great way for children to learn what life was like during the reign of the Stuarts warts and all with all the slimy facts presented in all their gory detail.
Crazy Times of the Stuarts
There is plenty to go at when writing about the Stuarts as some of the best remembered times in history took place in this era. Slimy Stuarts begins with James I and a not so flattering description of the king, setting the mood for what the Stewarts were really like. Can you imagine our queen picking her nose and wiping it on her sleeve? Yuk! Well that’s what James I used to do. Our kids especially enjoyed that Horrible Histories features the Guy Fawkes story, the infamous would be bomber of parliament. The very gruesome detail of how they executed Fawkes is laid bare in the book and our seven-year-old was fascinated!
The book also covers the execution of King Charles I, an event that surprised our kids, (the execution of a king that is), along with fascinating facts regarding the English Civil War. There’s a great Test Your Teacher Section which always goes down well too, while further spectacular events covered include The Great Fire of London and The Great Plague. Crime and Punishment is regaled in amazing gory detail too with facts like how a criminal would be guillotined by an animal. A rope would be tethered to the beast and the other end to the mechanism of the guillotine so that when the animal ran, down came the blade!
Wild and Wacky Facts
The kids enjoyed reading the crazy things people believed in during the Stuart period, the wackier the better as far as they were concerned. The cure for illnesses section had us all in stitches with such remedies as
- Drink a mixture of fleas and vinegar
- Cut a pigeon in half and place one half on each foot
- Scratch your gum with a new nail then hammer the nail into a tree
We will leave it to you to match up these cures with the specific diseases. The book also has a good games and quizzes section to test the kids on how much gruesome fact they have digested (ours did very well!)
Conclusion
As with all the Horrible Histories titles we have read Slimy Stuarts is up there with the rest when it comes to exceptional learning along with tons of laughs and bundles of fun for all the family. No gory detail is spared which pleases the kids immensely, while the title of the book certainly is perfectly fitting for this Slimy Stuart dynasty!