Review: Crusade in Jeans

Author: Thea Beckman

Started reading: September 4th 2020

Finished the book: September 26th 2020

Pages: 307

Genres: Historical, YA, Adventure

Published: 1973

Source: Physical copy

Goodreads score: 4.03

My score:

Synopsis

Fifteen-year-old Dolf uses a prototype time machine and gets stuck in the Middle Ages. Trying to find his way back to the twentieth century, he joins a children's crusade of almost ten thousand children on their way to the Holy Land. Dolf helps the children defy the terrible mountains, conquer disease and fight evil knights. Slowly, Dolf begins to realize that the real danger does not lurk behind the next mountaintop, but rather within the crusade itself.

My thoughts

Thanks to Eline for doing this buddyread with me. This book is a real classic in The Netherlands, so I was glad I finally got to read it. Maybe my hopes were to high, because I was disappointed by this book, and so was my buddy. We were glad this was a buddyread, because we weren't sure if we'd keep reading if we would be reading it by ourselves.

Pros

• Educational: I felt like this book could be educational towards children or teens. It gives you more insights in the world, especially Europe, during the Middle Ages. I felt like it also portrayed this in a way that was believable. It was a harsh time, with loads of sickness and deaths and that's what definitely came forward in the story.
• Curious: There children in this book face a lot of problems, some bigger and some smaller. I was always curious how it would be resolved. There were some problems where I wasn't sure how it could be solved so I liked to see how ingenious the children in this book were.
• Adventure: I love a good adventure story. This book definitely captures that genre. There was a lot of nature and there were different landscapes and countries. Adventure is something that I always feel attracted to, so that part of the book was definitely fun for me.

Cons

• Way too fast: I love it when you're dropped in the middle of a good action scene in a book, but in this book it's so fast and I had so many questions that it just felt weird. A 15-yo boy is zapped to the past by some scientists. I was like: "Where is the responsibility? Where are the parents?" I also felt the same about the ending. You're in the middle of the story and then the book ends and I would've loved for this book to have more pages after the end.
• Too much: I felt like everything that could go wrong was stuffed in this book. Robberies, sickness, kidnappings, deception. I wanted much more character development, I felt like this book was way too much on the surface and I would've loved more deep layers. I really didn't care about the characters and didn't mind if a main or side character died.

Overall

Maybe my hopes for this real Dutch classic were way too high. I was a little bit disappointed by the book. It is an adventurous story and definitely learns you more about the Middle Ages in Europe. I would've loved to care a bit more for the characters. Now I just shrugged when a character died.

Thanks for reading!

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