Britfield & The Lost Crown - A Book Review

This book review was originally written and posted over the summer. This fall, the author, C.R. Stewart has been on book tour sharing his book with student audiences. Britfield & The Lost Crown has been receiving awards along the way. From what I can tell from the social media posts, it is a grand adventure of reading encouragement just like the book itself. Promoting reading is always a good thing. Join in, check out the adventure story Britfield & The Lost Crown by C.R. Stewart.

A new book delivered to my mailbox always equals happy mail for me. Over the summer, I was delighted to receive a soft cover copy of the newly published Britfield & The Lost Crown by C.R. Stewart for review with homeschoolreviewcrew. This newly published adventure novel is available as a physical hard or soft cover book or as an e-book. Despite, or perhaps, because of years of homeschooling our children which involved reading with and/or to them regularly, my own reading for pleasure was often put on the back burner and has become less and less of an activity for me over the years. Due to the many changes in our lives this summer, Britfield & The Lost Crown was in my hands and there were no homeschool students nearby to read it with or to. This review became an opportunity to begin a return to my own personal reading for pleasure. It created the need to schedule it in.

Honestly, for me, it was a slow start. The early pages of the adventure novel had me a bit confused as to the setting in time of the story. Initially, I couldn't quite let go of trying to figure that out. Set in England, the place was clear, but perhaps, it was my lack of familiarity of England's history that added to my own confusion. Once I put that aside to just read and enjoy the story the pace picked up. As the two main characters, two precocious orphans, embarked on their adventure I was swept away into the excitement and mystery. Then with the author's vivid descriptions, the book began to read like a movie. I wasn't surprised at all to learn in my follow up research that the author, C.R. Stewart, is also a screen writer.

Run by unsavory characters, the orphanage is an oppressive place for children to live. The children manage to provide themselves with some education by secretly borrowing from a well stocked library in the mansion of the orphanage's overseers. The reading and sharing of the volumes taken from the book collection is a highlight for the orphans.They maintain some reasonable expectations about what they deserve through memories and the sharing of the volumes taken from the library. An attempt to escape is eminent. To not spoil the story, you'll have to read it to discover the outcome.

C.R. Stewart presents plenty of references for any reader to grab a bit of understanding of English history and geography. By including detailed descriptions of the places the young adventurers experience, he introduces landmarks of significance and interest. He also manages to include some art history references as the orphans encounter the work of famous European artists.

This story provides excellent opportunities to jump into further study of history, geography or art history. Finding images of  paintings by any of the seven masters mentioned in the story would further add to the visual richness of this adventure. Studying maps of locations described would develop geography literacy. The extensive eight week study guide at britfieldinstitute.org available for free encourages further learning. The guide includes a range of follow up activities from simple word game activities and reading comprehension questions to prompts for more in depth study. The vocabulary questions included encourage students to determine and understand word definitions based on context. A shared reading of Britfield & The Lost Crown with the use of the free study guide could easily turn the adventure story into a complete unit study covering several subjects.

This review not only introduced me to the writing of C.R. Stewart but also the the online resource of The Britfield Institute. There are resources for homeschool families and for classroom teachers available through the site. From downloadable illustrations with quotes encouraging learning and creativity to complete programs for teaching, this is a valuable source of potential teaching support to be aware of.

Downloadable images available from Britfield.org

I'm looking forward to reading the reviews of Britfield & The Lost Crown by other Review Crew reviewers. You can find them with me by clicking the image below.