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BURIED IN ICE

Name: BURIED IN ICE
Author: Owen Beattie
ISBN: 0-590-43848-4

THE MYSTERY OF A LOST ARCTIC EXPEDITION

by Owen Beattie & John Geiger with Shelley Tanaka & illustrated by Janet Wilson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1992

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In 1845, famed explorer Sir John Franklin set out with two ships in search of the elusive Northwest Passage; the expedition vanished, leaving only a few artifacts and several lonely graves for subsequent searchers to find. When, 140 years later, Beattie (a forensic anthropologist) began to look into the expedition's fate and the causes of its failure, he not only uncovered evidence of cannibalism but—by temporarily opening the graves to take tissue samples—proved that some or all of the crew had ingested debilitating levels of lead from poorly tinned food. This book is a digest of Beattie and Geiger's book for adults, Frozen in Time (1987), combined with a dramatized historical reconstruction plus plenty of paintings and color photos— including macabre photo portraits of three exhumed, startlingly well-preserved corpses. Like others in the ``Time Quest'' series: a fresh, vividly illustrated look at modern methods of archeological research. (Fiction/Nonfiction. 11-14)

Pub Date: April 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-590-43848-4

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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PEOPLE IN BONDAGE

AFRICAN SLAVERY SINCE THE 15TH CENTURY

by L.H. Ofosu-Appiah ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 1993

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The first title in Lerner's new ``Runestone'' imprint is an only slightly revised reprint of a 1971 publication—a fact mentioned nowhere in the book—with more readable layout but mostly recycled b&w illustrations (except for a photo of demonstrators protesting the Rodney King verdict). This sweeping survey of the Arab and European slave trade, sandwiched between brief accounts of slavery in the ancient world and the abolition of trade in African captives (at least to the Americas) is written largely in generalities (``The Underground Railroad was risky but full of adventure''). Wide-ranging and usable but drab, especially compared to Meltzer's All Times, All Peoples (1980) or Hamilton's Many Thousand Gone (p. 147). Index. (Nonfiction. 11- 13)

Pub Date: June 9, 1993

ISBN: 0-8225-3150-X

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Lerner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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GHOSTS OF THE DEEP

by Daniel Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1993

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Cohen adds to his corpus of corpses (Ghostly Tales of Love and Revenge, 1992, etc.) with an assortment of European and American nautical apparitions—some widely known (the Flying Dutchman; hammering aboard the Great Eastern, frequently presaging misfortune), others of local interest, including several tales of Cornish ghosts from 19th-century collector William Bottrell. Most of the incidents follow typical patterns: an admiral who goes down with his ship in the Mediterranean appears that evening at a London reception; a drowned woman haunts a Bahamian beach calling for her child; the faces of two sailors buried at sea ``follow'' their ship. The ghosts are mostly friendly or passive, but readers will still find cause for an occasional shudder (in one tale, a hotel guest wakes to find himself sharing a bed with a dead sailor), while Cohen's unsensational reportage adds, as usual, an air of credibility. The author closes with a chapter on the Constellation and the Queen Mary, both haunted ships that can be visited. No source notes. (Nonfiction. 11-13)