SWIFT

I had been reading the unabridged version of Gulliver's Travels myself, and my 7-year old son kept asking me to read it to him. The text is dense and we kept having to pause for lengthy explanations, so I decided to buy a "children's" version of Gulliver's Travels to read to my two boys, ages 5 and 7. This book is well illustrated, with a picture on every page, and is split into 6 short chapters. At 60-plus pages, you can read this book aloud in 15 minutes. However, the adventures in this book cover ONLY Gulliver's trip to Lilliput, and even that in only the most superficial way. There is no mention of his three subsequent voyages to island homes of equally fascinating peoples. If all you really want to share with your children is the most well-known of Gulliver's travels, and you are comfortable presenting it in a simplistic, picture-book way, then this book is for you. I would have prefered a book that covered all of Gulliver's travels, and in more detail, yet still providing illustrations and vocabulary appropriate for the 7-12 age group.