Children's ✦ Penny’s Take
The Old World and America
Philip J. Furlong · 1996
65/100
👎 Skip It
For Catholic or classical homeschool families who want a unified faith-and-history narrative, Furlong's text delivers exactly that in clear, accessible prose with built-in study questions. Anyone outside that specific context will find the early-twentieth-century colonial framing and the omission of European and Church wrongdoing a serious historiographical problem. Know your audience before purchasing.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
⚠ Parent note — our reviewers flagged: explicitly Catholic perspective presenting Church history favorably; early-20th-century colonial attitudes toward non-European peoples; not suitable for secular or pluralistic educational contexts. We still scored it 65; these are context for your family, not an automatic skip.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
safety80
substance62
craft68
originality55
accuracy48
hype65
age-fit72
human-eye60
Penny’s verdict65
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