Myles Standish was a military man who was contracted to sail with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. Though not a Pilgrim himself, he stayed and protected the Plymouth colony for the rest of his life. This is an interesting narrative of not only Standish's life, but about the Pilgrim's experience getting to the New World and how they were able to make it through hard times with the help of Native American friends. So why did I pick up a random book about Myles Standish? My family folklore claims that one of my ancestors came across on the Anne, three years after the Mayflower, and that Myles Standish performed the wedding for two of my direct progenitors. This turned out to be a good choice to satisfy my curiosity about the time period. Harness's writing is accessible and interesting and I learned a lot from this book. I had not really thought through how populated the "New World" was when the Pilgrim's arrived. It took the colonists a while after sighting land before they could find an unoccupied spot to start their colony. It turns out it was only unoccupied because there had been an ill-fated native village there, and was considered cursed land after everyone in the village died of sickness. I also hadn't realized that for the first 20 years the colonists struggled to repay the investors who had bankrolled their expedition. I think if grade schools used books like this instead of text books, the kids would learn a lot more about history and enjoy it a lot more, too. (2006, 144 p.)
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