WILLIAM MARSHAL: MEDIEVAL ENGLAND'S GREATEST KNIGHT is a delightful introduction for middle-school students to life during the reigns of the Angevin kings and historical non-fiction. Following chronological order, Weatherly highlights key moments from Marshal's childhood through old age to make a very grown-up story accessible to the younger reader. Older students and adult readers curious about Marshal will find WILLIAM MARSHAL: MEDIEVAL ENGLAND'S GREATEST KNIGHT offers a basic outline of Marshal's life and times. Weatherly carefully weaves Marshal's life into the larger fabric of Western Europe during the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries, tempting the reader to learn more about the players and events of that period. Sidebars are used to interject historical background information about social and political conditions needed to provide context for Marshal's choices and actions.

An easy read, WILLIAM MARSHAL: MEDIEVAL ENGLAND'S GREATEST KNIGHT also introduces middle-school readers to the basic scholarly writing format, including a table of contents, foreward, glossary, bibliography, sources, and index. Its presentation style makes WILLIAM MARSHAL: MEDIEVAL ENGLAND'S GREATEST KNIGHT an excellent teaching example when instructing middle-school students about writing research papers. If any fault can be found in presentation of material, it is that no sources are cited for the illustrations.

Always on the look out ways to bring the past to life in the classroom, I am glad to have found this book. Weatherly never allows Marshal's story to be overwhelmed by the stories of kings he served, not an easy task when those kings were Henry II and his sons, or by the events through which Marshall lived--the murder of Becket, the Crusades, and the Magna Carta. I found WILLIAM MARSHAL: MEDIEVAL ENGLAND'S GREATEST KNIGHT fun reading and highly recommend it.