Smiling faces aplenty in the scribbly, informal cartoon illustrations give this quick once-over a lighthearted air at odds, sometimes, with what the snippets of text are describing. The authors follow the career of a ninth-century Viking ship as it carries loot and slaves from an Irish monastery into a disastrous storm, is bought and repaired by two young warriors who join the Viking Great Army to invade England and years later is burned as a burial sacrifice after a Saxon raid. A spatter of what looks like real blood on one page aside, the nonviolent pictures show Vikings preparing for battle (rather than actually fighting) or, more often, working and celebrating with their families—surrounded by general printed or hand-lettered comments on the level of “The Viking gods live in a place called Asgard,” and “Viking children didn’t go to school. They learned skills from their family and friends.” Though closing with a dab of later history and a combined glossary/index, this is too superficial for assignment use, but it might lead readers to more rousing treatments, such as Susan Margeson’s Eyewitness Viking (2005). (Nonfiction. 7-9)
