gracer 's review for:

Hans Brinker, Or, the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland by Mary Mapes Dodge

4.0

---

I liked this book a lot more than I expected to! I thought it was a simple children's book about Dutch kids, but it turns out Hans Brinker is basically used to add some adventure to a book that is actually more like a child's history of the Netherlands, made really fun by the exciting historical events it talks about, and made adventurous by all of the skating and strange/exotic vehicles and foods and sights. At first I thought it was a little stereotypical, and although there are definitely some generalizations, they didn't seem so bad after the first 20-30 pages.