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MUMMIES AND THEIR MYSTERIES

Name: MUMMIES AND THEIR MYSTERIES
Author: Charlotte Wilcox
ISBN: 0-87614-767-8

by Charlotte Wilcox ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 3, 1993

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``You may have mixed feelings about seeing a mummy,'' writes the author of Trash! (1988) and A Skyscraper Story (1990); but ``remember that a mummy, though once really alive, is now really dead.'' Suggesting that mummies be viewed with respect rather than jokes or revulsion (though she's not above an occasional joke herself—one hideous specimen is labeled ``Miss Chile''), Wilcox uses examples from around the world to show what can be learned from them: why many Egyptian mummies have badly worn teeth; why so few Incan men were found at the burial site near Pisco; what killed members of the 1845 Franklin expedition in northern Canada; the wealth of cultural detail preserved with the bog people; a 5000- year-old hunter recently discovered in the Italian Alps. Wilcox describes the process of mummification, both accidental and deliberate (some Japanese Buddhist priests did it to themselves), and concludes with a look at modern mummies, including a gold- plated cat. Plenty of well-chosen color photos add meat to the bones, both enhancing the lively text and inducing delicious shudders. Glossary; brief list of places to visit; index. (Nonfiction. 10-12)

Pub Date: June 3, 1993

ISBN: 0-87614-767-8

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Carolrhoda

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES

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MAMA GOD, PAPA GOD

A CARIBBEAN TALE

adapted by Richardo Keens-Douglas ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 1999

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Mama God, Papa God ($15.95; Apr. 26; 32 pp.; 1-56656-307-0): The creation story takes a whimsical Caribbean turn in a seamless blend of religion and folk-art set in Haiti. Tired of living in darkness, Papa God creates light, then goes on to make the world as a beautiful gift for Mama God. Together, they design a detailed world filled with brilliance, love, and humor. Highly stylized illustrations rich in primary colors show the progress of creation as animals, birds, water, fish, wind, and rain take their place in the world. This unusual rendition of the creation tale sings to a calypso beat and gives a strikingly different and exuberant interpretation of how the world began. (Picture book. 3-8)

Pub Date: April 26, 1999

ISBN: 1-56656-307-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Interlink

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES

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THE GREEN MIST

adapted by Marcia Sewall & illustrated by Marcia Sewall ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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A beguiling retelling of a 19th-century Lincolnshire tale that fairly dances with an impatience to be read aloud. Mouth-filling words dot this story, the context making them easily understood while taking away none of their mystery. Bogles and other horrid things live in the cracks and cinders and sleep in the fields in the old times, and at darkling every night folk walk round their houses with lights in their hands to keep the mischancy beings away. In autumn, “they sang hush-a-bye songs in the fields, for the earth was tired” and they fear the winters when the bogles have nothing to do but make mischief. As the year turns, they wake the earth from its sleeping each spring, and welcome the green mist that brings new growth. In one family, a child pines, longing for the green mist to return with the sun. Through the long winter she grows so weak her mother must carry her to the doorsill, so she can crumble the bread and salt onto the earth to hail the spring. The green mist comes, scented with herbs and green as grass, and the child thrives, once again “running about like a sunbeam.” The green, gold, brown, and gray of the watercolors show fields and haycocks, knobby-kneed children and raw-boned elders, a counterpoint to the rich text. (Picture book. 4-9)