A somewhat grisly but fascinating look at what preserved bodies can reveal of their lives and cultural origins.
A forensic and archaeological introduction to some amazing remains, published in collaboration with the British Museum.
Throughout history and around the world, human remains attest to ancient (and not-so-distant) cultures and communities. Skulls and bones are everywhere, but well-preserved bodies, such as Ötzi the Iceman, are especially rich in information. Ralphs offers in-depth looks at mummification and discusses beliefs in gods and the afterlife; he takes readers to elaborate tombs, like the Great Pyramid, as well as bogs, catacombs, and underground chambers. The author sensitively handles difficult topics such as child sacrifice. He covers well-known cultural sites such as ancient Egypt and Pompei, as well as potentially unfamiliar and eye-opening ones. Readers will meet the oldest mummifiers, the Chinchorro, who lived on the west coast of South America and took an egalitarian approach, preserving everyone who died, regardless of age or status. Ralphs also spotlights the salt mines of Iran, the Taklamakan Desert in China, the Siberian steppe, and the Arctic. The writing is clear and engaging, and the many unknowns remain tantalizing mysteries. Wright’s precise and colorful gouache, acrylic, and ink illustrations bring the cultural settings, preserved remains, and compelling (and impressive) artifacts, including tools, food, clothes, weapons, and crafts, to vivid life.
A somewhat grisly but fascinating look at what preserved bodies can reveal of their lives and cultural origins. (maps, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798887770819
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Bial (A Handful of Dirt, p. 299, etc.) conjures up ghostly images of the Wild West with atmospheric photos of weathered clapboard and a tally of evocative names: Tombstone, Deadwood, Goldfield, Progress, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, the OK Corral. Tracing the life cycle of the estimated 30,000 ghost towns (nearly 1300 in Utah alone), he captures some echo of their bustling, rough-and-tumble past with passages from contemporary observers like Mark Twain: “If a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was appear in public in a white shirt or stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.” Among shots of run-down mining works, dusty, deserted streets, and dark eaves silhouetted against evening skies, Bial intersperses 19th-century photos and prints for contrast, plus an occasional portrait of a grizzled modern resident. He suggests another sort of resident too: “At night that plaintive hoo-hoo may be an owl nesting in a nearby saguaro cactus—or the moaning of a restless ghost up in the graveyard.” Children seeking a sense of this partly mythic time and place in American history, or just a delicious shiver, will linger over his tribute. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-06557-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
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