A
special horse named Hosanna changes the
lives of two English brothers and those
around them as they fight with King Richard I
against Saladin's armies during the Third
Crusades.
 In
twelfth-century England, after his master,
a maker of coins for the king, is brutally
punished for alleged cheating, seventeenyear-old Edmund finds himself traveling to
the Holy Land as squire to a knight crusader
on his way to join the forces of Richard
Lionheart.
 Two
friends, Peter and John, are caught on
opposing sides of the war between the
crusading Catholic Knights and the heretic
city of Béziers in 1209, and they embark on
separate quests to uncover a secret that
could change the world.
 Presents
a brief history of the Crusades
written for early readers, and describes how
the armies of Western Europe came together
to try and reclaim the Holy Land from the
Muslims.
 Relates
the adventures of the Saxon knight
Ivanhoe in 1194, the year of Richard the
Lion-Hearted's return from the Third
Crusade.
 Life
becomes much more exciting for Tristan,
an orphan, after he is chosen to be a squire
to one of the Knights Templar and entrusted
with getting the Holy Grail safely back to
England.
 Elvina,
the unusual granddaughter of
renowned Jewish rabbi Solomon ben Isaac,
who prefers studying and writing to activities
considered respectable for girls, takes a
great risk by helping a young boy who has run
away from a group of Christian Crusaders in
eleventh century Troyes, France.
 Explores
the Fourth Crusades in
Constantinople, providing historical
information about the reasons for the
invasion, military strategies, and
consequences of the conflict.
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/history/
middle_ages/the_crusades/activity/

The returning crusader-Carl Friedrich Lessing/ The
Bridgeman Art Library