Skip to main content

Sailing the Unknown: Around the World with Captain Hook

By

Sailing the Unknown:  Around the World with Captain Cook
by Michael J. Rosen, illustrated by Maria Cristina Pritelli
Creative Editions, 2012.  Unpaged.  Nonfiction.

     The youngest known sailor on Captain Cook's 1768 was one Nicholas Young, and eleven year old who cared for the ship's nanny goat, Navy, and who was the first to sight the land of New Zealand, and have a headland named for him--Young Nick's Head.  In Sailing the Unknown. . . Michael Rosen invents a diary for Nick with widely spaced entries to give his young readers an overview of Captain Cook's two year and ten month voyage. Maria Pritelli's pictures beautifully illustrate Nick's terse but revealing writings, and the overall effect of the book is to make one want to know more. A couple of quibbles--when the Endeavour reaches the land that will come to be known as New Zealand, Nick's entry records that Maoris threw spears at the landing party. Probably the sailors did not know the name of the native peoples at this point. That aside, this is a fine introduction to the early days of exploration by a young man who looks a little bit like an 18th century Tintin.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) by Pamela Espeland & Elizabeth Verdick

By
If there's one book today's kids need to read, it is Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) . The authors provide a fun format for teaching etiquette to children. They discuss proper behavior at home, at school, at other people's homes and in public places. The information is completely up-to-date with cellphone manners and netiquette included. Fun, cartoony illustrations are on practically every page giving the book great visual appeal. This book is perfect for boys and girls in the fourth grade or older. WARNING: Bodily functions are discussed.
Post a Comment
Read more

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin

By loo
Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin Illustrated by Leslie Evans Charlesburg; 2009; unpaged Faces of the Moon is a short nonfiction book that describes the different phases of the moon and why the moon appears like it does on certain nights. This book is short and sweet so even the youngest of moon lovers will enjoy it. The layout is simplistic and easy to follow. I don’t know much about the moon so I found it very interesting.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more