Title: Raise the Flag: Terrific flag facts, stories and trivia!
Author: Clive Gifford
Illustrator: Tim Bradford
Age Range: 8 – 11 years
Grade Level: 2 – 7
Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: QEB Publishing (August 28, 2018)
Category: Non-fiction

Book Description:

Packed full of wow-inducing facts and trivia, this book offers much more than the average flag book. Featuring the history of flags, and many different types of flags, it’s both a comprehensive guide and an entertaining read. 268 flags are explored including the national flag of every country in the world. Find out how Lichtenstein and Haiti discovered they shared the exact same flag and which national flag was designed by a 15-year-old schoolgirl.

Each continent has its own atlas-style chapter with the history of significant flags fully explored. Themed sections then introduce the many different types of flags, great moments in flag history (flags at the poles and in space for example) and  how we communicate using flags. There’s also a design-your-own flag activity and a fabulous flag quiz at the back of the book.

My Thoughts on ‘Raise the Flag:  Terrific flag facts, stories and trivia!’:

trivia, uses and more:

This book is exactly what it says it is in its title – full of terrific flag facts, stories and trivia! It includes a lot of various fun facts like flag fails(for example, the US flag was once flown at an international meeting of national leaders with the wrong number of stars!) and a quiz at the end of the book to check what you learned and what you observed(!).

Did you know the names for the different parts of a flag (or that a flag had parts)? There is so much more you can learn as you read this book. You find out about many different types of flags and learn how flags are/were used in communicating – in sports, for messaging in the high seas, during war times, and more. You learn about the symbolism of flags – based on their designs as well as on how they are flown or moved.

history and geography and more trivia:

It also includes the history of flags in general as well as some more specific stories about some flags. They are not just pieces of fabric – they have cool origin stories, are treasured and respected by the people who raise these flags (whether it is a flag for an organization, a team, a city, a country, or anything else), and they have specific ways they can be used, displayed, folded, and unfolded.

The flags of the world are organized by their continents, with some of the country flags highlighted for each continent. These highlighted flags provide us with very interesting stories to read. I loved learning about different flag designers across the world, from a 15-year old art student in New Guinea to a designer who had to design his country’s flag in a week’s time!

In addition to all this information, the book also includes celebrations for flags held across the world, and so many more interesting facts that you can discover for yourself, like the one below. The book also includes activities that kids can work on – like designing a flag (one that is their own, that represents them), and ends with a glossary of terms used in the book.

An aside:

A caveat to note: Some country flags were not shown in the book though it describes it as ‘every nation’; on checking further about those countries, I noticed they are recognized differently by the UN (though not always the case for all included/excluded sovereign states) but it is a minor caveat.

In Summary:

‘Raise the Flag’ is flag-tastic (as it states in a chapter title and I agree!). The amount of information contained in this book astounded me! It is a wonderful learning resource for history and geography units in school and classrooms. It can also make a great addition to home libraries with so much to discover 🙂

Rating: A
Reading Level: 8 years and above
Reread Level: 5/5

Disclaimer: Thank You #NetGalley for the DRC of this book. The opinions are my own.

Question to You, Dear Reader:

Do you have any interesting stories to share about flags? As for me, our family has a small bottle of ash (we have not attended a second ceremony yet so still a memento) from a US flag that was ceremoniously retired at my son’s Cub Scout event. It was truly profound and memorable.

Writing this post as a series for the Ultimate Blog Challenge and Write 31 Days.  31 Days, 31 Books! This is for Day Twenty Five, almost a week later (and a whole lot of catching up to do!)

Day 0 Day 1  Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5  Day 6  Day 7 Day 8 Day 9  Day 10 Day 11  Day 12 Day 13   Day 14  Day 15  Day 16  Day 17  Day 18  Day 19 Day 20 Day 21 Day 22  Day 23  Day 24