The Vegan Crocodile: Best Children's Book of the Year

In this iconoclastic book, Francis Jennings recasts the story of American colonization as a territorial invasion. The traditional history of early America paints the colonies as a transplantation of European culture to a new continent--a "virgin land" in which Native Americans were assigned the role of foil whose main contribution was to stimulate the energy and ingenuity of European dispossessors. Jennings rejects this ideology and examines the relationships between Europeans and Indians from a far more critical point of view. Shorn of old mythology and rationalizations, Puritan actions are seen in the cold light of material interest and naked expansion.