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UNCOMMON TRAVELER

Name: UNCOMMON TRAVELER
Author: Don Brown
ISBN: 0-618-00273-1

MARY KINGSLEY IN AFRICA

by Don Brown & illustrated by Don Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2000

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Brown has created a companion piece to his Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries (1999) by profiling yet another fascinating and relatively unknown 19th-century British woman. Mary Kingsley never went to school, had a sickly mother and a mostly absent father, but she read in her father’s library all the while tending to her mother and running the household. When both parents died in 1892, the 30-year-old Kingsley went on the first of several trips to Africa. There, in her proper Victorian attire, she collected insects, scratched a hippo behind the ear with her umbrella, fell into a spike-filled pit (kept from harm by her “good thick skirt”) and went back home to write and lecture about all she had seen and done. Brown manages to get a lot of her story into a few graceful vignettes, and he does the same with his watercolors, using a blue-green and gold-brown palette to evoke London and jungle, desert and heat. The figures are sketched with just enough line to keep them anchored, as we see Kingsley bat a crocodile on the snout, cross a ravine on a slippery log, and bathe in a starlit lake. (Picture book/biography. 6-9)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-618-00273-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
IT'S ABOUT TIME!
by Don Brown ; illustrated by Don Brown

- BOOK REVIEW
RUN AND HIDE
by Don Brown ; illustrated by Don Brown

- BOOK REVIEW
83 DAYS IN MARIUPOL
by Don Brown ; illustrated by Don Brown

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ERIC THE RED

THE VIKING ADVENTURER

by Neil Grant & illustrated by Victor Ambrus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

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This entry in the What's Their Story? series goes beyond the well-known image of the famously fierce Eric the Red to unveil a driven explorer and founder of a new land. Eric, like his father, became an outlaw due to his hot temper and the killings that were the unfortunate outgrowth of the many skirmishes that arose. His outlaw status and a dearth of farm land inspired Eric to go exploring. During a three-year expedition, Eric and his men saw Greenland; Grant (The Great Atlas of Discovery, 1992), wryly comparing Eric to a travel agent as he promotes the new land, divulges the origins of Greenland's name. "Although it was mostly covered with ice, he called it 'Greenland' because, he said, people are more likely to go to a place if it has an attractive name." The biography offers a good, dense overview of Eric's daring explorations, his leadership, the discoveries of his son, Leif, and the impact of Christianity on the Vikings. Focusing on the accomplishments of the Vikings instead of the bloodlust that has historically characterized their labors, Grant refers without glorification to the violence that was part of a warrior's life. Ambrus's meticulous illustrations vividly portray Eric's times. (maps, index) (Picture book/biography. 6-9)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-19-521431-5

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HONEYMAN & THE HUNTER
by Neil Grant

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ATLAS OF DISCOVERY
by Neil Grant & illustrated by Peter Morter

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HOW BEN FRANKLIN STOLE THE LIGHTNING

by Rosalyn Schanzer & illustrated by Rosalyn Schanzer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2003

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The author of Davy Crockett Saves the World (2001) builds a convincing case for adding Ben Franklin to the pantheon of American tall-tale heroes. To comic scenes featuring a gnomic, potbellied Franklin jovially presenting various inventions, experiments, and incidents from his life, Schanzer adds a rousing litany of feats and abilities: “Why, Ben Franklin could swim faster, argue better, and write funnier stories than practically anyone in colonial America. He was a musician, a printer, a cartoonist and a world traveler!” And “he really did steal lightning right out of the sky! And then he set out to tame the beast.” How? With a series of experiments, including the famous one with the kite—luckily, the storm wasn’t a severe one, or “the great inventor would have been toast”—and then the introduction of the lightning rod, which has saved thousands of lives over the years. Capped by an afterword that adds even more luster to Franklin’s career, this effervescent tribute will give legions of young readers a peerless role model, whose actual, well-documented deeds need no exaggeration. (source note) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)