Who Was Ferdinand Magellan?

For 8 year olds who love a true adventure, Sydelle Kramer tells the story of the first voyage around the world in Who Was Ferdinand Magellan?

What happens

Ferdinand grows up on a farm where the cows and goats live downstairs. At twelve he's sent to be a page for the queen of Portugal. From the palace he can watch the ships coming and going from Lisbon, loaded with spices, and he decides the sea is for him.

Nobody makes it easy. He's poor, he isn't popular and the king of Portugal can't stand him (people even call him Clubfoot behind his back after a battle wound leaves him limping). So he goes to Spain, where a teenage king agrees to pay for five rather rotten old ships.

Then it's off into the unknown. There are storms, mutinies and twenty days stuck without a breath of wind. There's a whole winter in the freezing south, with penguins nobody has a name for yet. And there's the moment his ships finally find the passage through South America and sail out into a calm new ocean. He calls it the Pacific (he has no idea how big it is).

It reads like an adventure story, just a true one. The chapters are short, and little fact sections pop up along the way about armour, ships and the man who kept a journal of the whole trip. The best detail might be the shopping list. Who knew you'd need 21,120 pounds of cheese to sail round the world?

It's also honest about Magellan. He's brave and clever and stubborn. The book says plainly that he could be cruel too.

Some of that honesty is grim for this shelf. A rebel captain is stabbed to death and two are beheaded. On the long crossing the sailors eat sawdust and rats, and scurvy makes their teeth fall out. Magellan himself is killed in a battle on a beach (the timeline says so, so it's no secret). If your reader is upset by that sort of detail, read it alongside them. If they want ALL the gross facts, they'll be delighted.

What to read next

If they'd like another true life story from the same series, there's a royal one waiting in Who Was Marie Antoinette?