The thread title pretty much says it all.
I’m looking for something that’ll keep my interest and doesn’t read like a history textbook. On the same token I don’t need to know what he ate for breakfast every day. Thanks!
Robert Lawson’s book I Discover Columbus, c. 1940 or so, is a lot of fun. It’s a kids’ book, part of Lawson’s famous-animals-of-history series (along with Ben and Me, about the mouse who gives Benjamin Franklin all his good ideas; Captain Kidd’s Cat, in which the aforementioned feline tells all about their adventures on the high seas and explains how the guy wasn’t really a pirate, just misunderstood; and Mr. Revere and I, about the horse which Paul Revere rides to warn the Minutemen that the British were coming). I recommend them all.
I Discover Columbus, like the others, has great line drawings and a funny story to tell. The parrot who narrates the tale describes Columbus in generally unflattering but nevertheless affectionate terms (Columbus comes across as an idle dreamer, overly ambitious, attached to lofty titles and fancy clothes, a poor navigator and an even worse sailor). There’s nary a word about Columbus’s depredations against the Indians. Ferdinand, BTW, is portrayed as an impatient loudmouth and Isabella is a sweetly ruthless queen, and the brains of the royal pair.
My Master Columbus, by Cedric Belfrage, is historical fiction told from the point of view of one of the natives who first encountered Columbus. I read it a long time ago, but I remember enjoying it a lot.