We know the names and the outcome but do we know where they came from? I certainly didn’t. Cute book to learn about some of the most well known names childhood!

Childhood of Famous People is a colorful short biography based colorful book about the childhoods of 25 very famous people from throughout history. Released 25th May 2021 by Albatross, it's 48 pages and available in hardcover format.

The book has a neat fold-over layout. Each of the biographies covers 2 pages. The entries are written in first person point of view with highlights from their lives. The right hand page has a half page foldover which gives the answer to the "who am I?" with one of the subject's best known adult portrait when opened up.

The art is full of small details which will provide lots of fun for reading time for kids and the subjects themselves will be easy to find more information on for further learning. They are from many historical periods arranged chronologically, from ancient Egypt to the 20th century. There are 7 female characters included, from Nefertiti to Edith Piaf, and a scant 6 from all of history who are persons of color.

All in all, this would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition or for gift-giving. It's a good introduction to biography for young readers and will give a good starting point for further investigation. All info included in the book is age-appropriate which is salient given the not-always-G-rated lives of the subjects. Although apparently written and produced in the Czech Republic, the writing and grammar are correct and if it's translated, it's mostly seamless.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Here are my pros and cons for Childhoods of Famous People:

Pros
1. I quite enjoyed this book. As I’ve stated previously, I love trivia and factoids, so this book would have been quite enjoyable to me as a child.
2. I loved the guessing game aspect of this book! Anything that makes reading fun, particularly when the reader is also learning something, is awesome!!!
3. There is a lot of biographical detail about each individual included in this book. I was impressed at the amount of information that was provided. Beyond just hints about what they were famous for when they grew up, there were also blurbs about hobbies and games some of these famous people liked to play when they were children. How fun!
4. The illustrations are fantastic. I particularly enjoyed how the famous people were depicted as children.

Cons
1. If you get the ebook, you will miss out of the fun part of this book. Each person’s page starts out with hints about who they might be, which allows the reader to guess who it is. Then they can lift the flap in the book to see if they got it right. You lose this guessing game aspect with the ebook.

Summary
If your child enjoys history, biographies, or simply learning new things, I highly recommend this book. And I do encourage you to obtain a physical copy to fully enjoy the experience of reading it.

Thank you NetGalley and Albatros Media for a free eARC of this book, which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

While the title and cover are not very interesting, the book itself is. Nicely written information about what many famous people were like as kids.

Looking to learn some interesting facts about famous people? Grab this book!

For starters, I liked one of the first pages where it has the little images of the people in the book all on two pages, it was a great layout!

Next, you've got some solid info in here to provide kids with a background in these historical and famous figures. I liked having some knowledge and education packed in there. The information is written almost like a journal (with "I..." statements), which I thought was unique and made the book stand out. It also felt very friendly that way, which fits the audience of children readers.

Overall, this is a nice book! It's a quick read with some great pictures and a splash of education.

Three out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Albatros Media for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

This would be a great book for a parent and child to go through together. Reading the excerpt about each famous person and then doing the accompanied activity. This is a nice way to get kids interested in history.

This is a very well done book int hat, little readers can choose to beign reading based on what catches their fancy. Pictures help. Kid liked the premise of the book that all famous people were once children too just like them. It is interesting to see, how they would have thought like children of their bright future.

This was such a good book!! It had 25 famous people that you learn all about their childhoods!! I really loved the colorful pictures!!! With every famous person, you are given a fun activity to do!! I would recommend this to a classroom teacher who needs something extra about one of these famous people, or to a child who wants to know about famous people.

3.5

This was a really interesting book! Lots of information I didn’t know. I thought the selection of people was pretty good and not always just the “cliché” choices. However, of 25 people, there were only 8 women and 5 POC. Both those should be at least 50% considering we’re talking all of history.

I liked the accompanying activities with most stories, simple crafts and games any kid reading could find the supplies to make. In the same vein, I liked that the book asked questions. The more ways to engage a child, the better.

On the other, I had a hard time determining what the reading level was supposed to be. The drawings and activities suggested young, but the pages were absolutely packed with words. It was small and dense text and would definitely be too much for lots of kids to be reading independently. I discovered it was for 6-10 year olds. That seems like a wide range considering the amount of reading progress made in those educational years. I think 10 may be closer to accurate, 6 if accompanied by an adult. Either way, its not something you could sit down and read in one sitting, I didn’t. Which I view as a con for a children’s book. A pro, though, is its something that has a lot of value in returning to it many times.

So, great, interesting info but I would have found a way to cut some or spread it over more digestible pages.

I received this book from honest review from netgalley #netgalley

This had information that I didn't even know was a history major I found that very enlightening but also fun and entertaining for children as well.