THE VIRGINIA COLONY

The least substantial (in content) and youngest (in tone) of the three concurrent colonial history series is handicapped from the outset by its small print; otherwise this might have served, with its bits of dialogue and extended fictional inset, as a ""story"" for, say, fourth graders (even so, it should have had a map). As a superficial account of happenings the text is smooth enough if somewhat pappy (one chapter: ""The Pitiful Pioneers"") but it offers virtually no interpretation. The parallel volumes in the other series have not yet appeared; hopefully one or the other will be more suitable.