"CROCODILES, CAMELS, AND DUGOUT CANOES: Eight Adventurous Episodes"

by Bo Zaunders ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

Treacherous terrain and hostile environments were everyday fare for the 19th-century and early 20th-century global explorer-adventurers the husband-and-wife author and illustrator present in these pages. Life and limb were always at stake, but these gutsy, persevering men and women--among them Charles Waterton, Richard Burton, and Mary Kingsley--overcame fear, danger, and almost insurmountable obstacles to answer the call. August AndrÆ’e set out to be the first to travel across the North Pole in a balloon, Ernest Shackleford wanted to be the first to make an overland crossing of the Antarctic, and Annie Smith Peck was the third woman to climb the Matterhorn (and the first to make the climb in pants). Others, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, traveled ""for travel's sake"": Dervla Murphy wanted to see the world, while Antoine de Saint-ExupÆ’ry wished to quench the ""thirst to fly."" Running from three to five pages each, the vignettes offer snapshot-sized, near-death moments from the adventurers' travels, then backpedal to include other background. The same detailed pen-and-ink drawings that skillfully reveal perspectives in Munro's Inside Outside books deftly capture the travels of these hardy souls, from the Arctic to the Sahara.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998

Categories: CHILDREN'S