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Narrated by Amanda Dolan
Kathleen KrullUnabridged — 1 hours, 56 minutes
Narrated by Amanda Dolan
Kathleen KrullUnabridged — 1 hours, 56 minutes
You might know that Columbus discovered America, Lewis and Clark headed west with Sacajawea, and Sally Ride blasted into space. But what do you really know about these bold explorers? What were they like as kids? What pets or bad habits did they have? And what drove their passion to explore unknown parts of the world? With juicy tidbits about everything from favorite foods to first loves, Lives of the Explorers reveals these fascinating adventurers as both world-changers and real people.
The entertaining style and solid research of the Lives of ... series of biographies have made it a favorite with families and educators for twenty years. This new volume takes readers through the centuries and across the globe, profiling the men and women whose curiosity and courage have led them to discover our world.
"Readers will enjoy delving into the exploits of intrepid explorers across time, and, literally, space." —Kirkus "Hewitt's humorous caricatures, large of head and slight of body, continue to amuse, and the maps included in many entries are a welcome addition." —Bulletin "A strong addition to middle-grade nonfiction collections." —School Library Journal —
09/01/2014
Gr 4–6—Krull introduces middle-grade readers to a diverse cast of 17 explorers in this latest offering from her series. A short, two-to five page chapter is devoted to each explorer, incorporating a biographical sketch and a short discussion of the explorer's contributions. The subjects are presented chronologically, beginning in the medieval period with the Norseman Leif Ericson and finishing with the astronaut Sally Ride. Readers learn about these historical figures' adventures while also getting a taste of each explorer's personality and character. Brilliant, full-page caricatures of the explorers in light color introduce each chapter, their oversize heads adding an additional dimension of personality to the narrative. Hewitt's painted maps are splendid, revealing the twisting paths of many adventurers, including Capt. James Cook's winding sea routes and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's snaking trails. In addition to the famous personages of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan, special attention is given to less fabled discoverers, including Mary Kingsley and Isabella Bird. This work is a survey, providing summarized information, so the detail is shallower than volumes specializing on a single explorer or specific expedition, such as Richard Kozar's Lewis & Clark (Chelsea House, 2000). But what the book lacks in detail, it gains in an exceedingly diverse cast of historical figures, thus introducing young readers to the women, Asians, and African Americans who contributed to world discovery. Krull does not sugarcoat the history; the negative impacts of discovery upon native peoples are discussed, such as the violence resulting from Columbus's expeditions. A strong addition to middle-grade nonfiction collections.—Jeffrey Meyer, Mount Pleasant Public Library, IA
2014-06-30
Another in the popular What the Neighbors Thought series, this title tells of daring, curious, hardy men (mostly) and women from different countries and eras who took bold risks in uncharted territories out of senses of adventure, curiosity and mission.As a result of their courage, new maps and routes were developed; new animals, plants and merchandise were discovered—and the world changed irrevocably. Some subjects are well-known, others not so much. As with the series' other offerings, kids will discover enticing bits about both unfamiliar explorers and those they thought they knew: Magellan was a nasty piece of work, Capt. Cook forced sauerkraut on his crew, and one of Lewis and Clark's team mistook Lewis for an elk and shot him. The straightforward, accessible prose makes for fast reading, and Krull doesn't shy away from some deplorable, stomach-turning facts, which kids will devour and use to spice up staid homework assignments. Some chapters end with an "Onward" feature that includes additional facts about the explorer. Hewitt's colorful acrylic caricatures capture each adventurer's spirit with specific details of attire, locale and, in many cases, mode of transport. Maps of many of the journeys are included; there's no index.Readers will enjoy delving into the exploits of intrepid explorers across time and, literally, space. (Collective biography. 9-12)
| BN ID: | 2940169580310 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 08/26/2014 |
| Series: | Lives of... |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
CHAPTER 1
In Search of Trees
LEIF ERICSON
Born in Iceland(?), 970(?) Died in Greenland(?), 1020(?)
Viking famed as the first European to set foot in North America
Even baby Vikings knew their way around a boat, and Leif Ericson knew more than most. He grew up on a cliff overlooking the ocean, in a house made of mud and stone. His dad, Eric the Red, had come from Scandinavia and discovered Greenland, and the family settled in one of its nicer areas. But the winters seemed endless, and there were no trees — no green (ironically), no shade, no timber for building houses.
Ericson grew up hearing magical tales of lands covered with forests. At about age twenty-one, taking along some thirty others, he set out to find them.
In sagas told around the fire for the next ten centuries, Ericson was "a large, strong man, of very striking appearance and wise, as well as being a man of moderation in all things." Vikings in general were more famous for fierceness than moderation. They carried weapons at all times (axes, swords, arrows, spears), wore shirts made of bearskin, and howled like wolves to frighten their enemies.
Aboard ship, Ericson's men ate fresh whale, seal, or caribou. At night they passed the time with stories about Thor and other gods. They played a game similar to chess; they carved spoons or figurines of gods from wood or bone. They doubled up to sleep in the animal-skin sacks that they used for holding tools.
Ericson landed in North America very pleased indeed: temperatures were above freezing, huge salmon jumped out of the rivers, the green grass would feed the livestock, and the landscape was dense with trees. He spent the winter and then sailed home, his boat loaded with precious timber.
His voyage inspired other explorers, while Ericson stayed in Greenland as the master of his estate. When he died at about age fifty, he left it all to his son.
Almost everything known about Leif Ericson was guesswork until 1961. In Newfoundland, on the coast of Canada, archaeologists found the remains of an ancient Greenland-style settlement, complete with a woodworking shop — believed to be Ericson's.
CHAPTER 2"Only the Half of What I Saw"
MARCO POLO
Born in 1254(?) and Died in 1324 in Venice, Italy
Italian who was the first European to explore China
Marco Polo's father was a merchant, the job everyone in Venice wanted. One successful trip to a faraway place for rare goods could make a family permanently wealthy. In highest demand were jewels, spices, Turkish carpets, and especially silk. Silk was so precious because it was rare, made only in China by women who took the strands that silkworms produced and transformed them into gorgeous cloth.
Polo's dad was away so long on a trading trip that Marco was fifteen before they met. Having grown up with relatives after his mother died, the boy had assumed he was an orphan. When his father and uncle invited him to join their next trip, he jumped at the chance. The older Polos had promised to bring holy oil from Jerusalem to Kubla Khan, emperor of China, and do a lot of trading on the way.
The three planned to sail, but when they saw their shoddy ships — held together with coconut twine, not nails — they quickly changed their plans and set off on what was later known as the Silk Road. This ancient system of trails, thousands of miles long, was the only known route into China by land.
Every morning, they would leave behind their fires (made with camel poo) and take off in the chilly hour before sunrise. When all went well, the Polos could cover twenty miles a day.
Each of those days brought an adventure. They frolicked with hundreds of wild sheep that had curly horns measuring five feet. They sipped a soup of Russian olives, Chinese cabbage, and the sliced thorax of a sheep. They visited people in a pearl-rich area who wore little except pearls, and Buddhist monasteries full of thousands of devout monks wearing scratchy sacks of blue and black. They met Mongolians who had trained themselves to go for days without eating, drinking the blood of their precious horses to keep from starving. They winced at men and women covered from head to toe with ornate tattoos, which at the time was such a painful and bloody process that it could be fatal.
Luckily, Marco kept a journal. At first he felt superior to cultures other than his own, but as the months passed, he grew more open-minded. He took a special interest in Buddhism, though he always presented himself as a devout Christian. Actually, he became expert at blending in wherever he was, like a chameleon.
The trail took the Polos through some of the most hostile places on the planet. One mountainous region was known as the "roof of the world" because the air was so thin that even birds didn't go there. They narrowly escaped bandits intent on kidnapping them and selling them as slaves. They evaded Indian pirates who would have forced them to drink seawater with tamarind until they vomited, in order to search for gems that could have been swallowed.
Marco did fall ill, possibly with tuberculosis. The Polos spent a year in a beautiful area now known as Afghanistan so he could recover in the clean, pure air, perhaps aided by the local opium. Marco was aghast at the nearby ruins of Balkh. Once a great metropolis, it was known as the Screaming City because it had been reduced to rubble by Genghis Khan's warriors, who had killed every inhabitant.
The last part of the journey took them across the "Sea of Death" desert. Riding at night because the days were just too hot, they followed a path marked by piles of bones — some animal, some human. The sands, notorious as the "Singing Sands," seemed to howl at them in the creepiest way.
At last, after three years and eight thousand miles, they reached their goal: China and the welcoming court of Emperor Kubla Khan. This Khan, grandson of Genghis, ruled the largest empire in the world.
Marco thought the Khan was simply over-the-top, sitting on his throne wearing robes of pure gold, a tame lion curled up at his feet. He had ten thousand white horses and about one hundred children. At his gigantic parties, complete with amusing performers of all kinds, elephants would stream in bearing gifts from his subjects.
The Polos were treated like royalty — the Khan wanted them to say good things about him when they got home. They didn't really have a choice about how to spend their time; one didn't say no to the Khan. He gave twenty-year-old Marco the job of traveling all over the empire to gather gossip, carrying a golden tablet that ordered everyone to treat him well. Still blending in wherever he was, Marco spoke Persian and various Mongol dialects, though he never learned Chinese.
Everything about China blew Marco away and was recorded in his journals. In Beijing, the impressive capital, thousands of carriages brought in precious raw silk every day. The city of Hangzhou, the largest in the world at that time, was lovely and well-organized, with citizens reading books and eating steamed pancakes in tiny cafés. Marco learned that those strange black burning rocks were coal, meaning he could heat water for a hot bath every day (a bizarre notion to Venetians, who rarely bathed). He saw private indoor bathrooms (unlike in Venice, where chamber pots got dumped out the window). He gasped at hideously large snakes that turned out to be crocodiles, and other creatures he claimed were unicorns, but were Asian rhinoceroses. He heard the loudest sound he'd ever heard: the blast of gunpowder, then unknown in Europe.
Fourteen years went by. The Polos begged the Khan to let them return home, but he enjoyed their company — and having them around made him feel powerful. Finally he gave them a job that allowed them to sail away: escorting a woman known as the Blue Princess to her wedding in Iran, leaving them free to continue on to Venice. The whole journey home took the Venetians three years, and only eighteen of the original crew of six hundred survived it. Dreadful things happened to them, but Marco's journals are mysteriously mute about the details.
When the Polos limped into Venice, filthy and ragged after their journey, the other Polos didn't recognize them. Then the men ripped open their robes to reveal a fortune in jewels, making for a happy reunion. When Marco started blabbing all the things he'd seen, he was nicknamed "Marco Millions" by those who thought he was telling millions of lies. He had been to places no European had seen, and some simply didn't believe his tales.
Was Marco, now forty-one, bored by his old life on land? Or was he irritated by the children taunting "Mister Marco, tell us another lie"? Perhaps, because he didn't settle down; he commanded a boat during a war between Venice and Genoa. He was captured and spent a year in a Genoese prison. It wasn't too bad — he had a comfortable apartment, possibly even servants. He was able to send for his journals, and with the help of a fellow prisoner wrote a book about his adventures: The Travels of Marco Polo.
He married at forty-five; had three daughters, named Fantina, Bellela, and Moreta; and bought a palazzo in a stylish neighborhood. For the rest of his life, until he died at age sixty-nine, Marco Polo worked as a merchant and told his stories to anyone who would listen. He never left Venice again.
"I have only told the half of what I saw" was his refrain.
ONWARD
* Polo's trustworthiness wasn't questioned just by his fellow Venetians. Most scholars today detect some exaggerations in his book, though deem it basically true. One person who never doubted was Christopher Columbus, who had a much-thumbed, notated copy of Travels with him on his boat in 1492 as he looked for a sea route to places Polo described.
* Polo's greatest contribution to geography may have been inspiring increasingly accurate maps. He didn't draw maps himself, but by using his rough measurement of "a day's journey," others were able to.
* The children's game Marco Polo, a form of tag played in water, is named for him, though no one is sure when or where the game started. One player calls out "Marco!" in an attempt to locate and tag other players, who yell back "Polo!" (Of course, if Marco himself were playing, he'd call out "Me! Me!")
CHAPTER 3Kindness of Strangers
IBN BATTUTA
Born in 1304 and died in 1368(?) in Tangier, Morocco
Muslim explorer from North Africa who traveled 75,000 miles in thirty years
The most-miles-traveled award, at least for the medieval era, goes to Ibn Battuta. A devout Sunni Muslim, he set out from Morocco at age twenty-two to make the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca, several thousand miles away — and just kept going.
His life as a religious scholar and judge in Tangier had been comfortable. Well-educated, he could pepper his conversations with poetry, Koran quotes, and references to classic Arabic literature. He dressed like a legal scholar, in a large turban and a spotless gown of fine fabric.
Battuta's travels as a poor holy man were not always so comfy. He explored much of Arabia, then India, Southeast Asia, Spain, and parts of Africa, always with the goal of finding the holiest people there. Sometimes he thought of staying to study with them, and sometimes he cried from homesickness, especially when he learned from far away of the death of his father, then a son, and then his mother. But he was too restless, too curious, to stop exploring. "Never take the same road twice" was his motto.
Unable to swim and uncomfortable around water, Battuta preferred traveling on land. He was treated generously at Christian monasteries and at way stations that took care of Muslim holy men. Sometimes he joined caravans for companionship. Other times he was helped by kind local rulers who might give him clean clothes with coins sewed into them, as well as horses and slaves for his journey.
Battuta frowned on those who smoked hashish, drank alcohol, or neglected their prayers. He hated markets that stank of rotten fruit, too much fresh fish, and the blood of slaughtered camels flowing in the street — all common at the time. Men in bathhouses without towels around their waists bothered him, as did women whose heads weren't covered or who had male friends, all of which he considered immodest. He despised violence toward others — slaves being abused, or the practice of forcing criminals to eat human excrement.
He blended in and felt at home almost everywhere, except China. He found everything there to be foreign to him, which "distressed me so much that I stayed at home and went out only when it was necessary."
A fan of the spiritual and physical beauty of women, Battuta married at least ten times and fathered at least five children. He rarely took the wives or children traveling with him — the women's families objected. Six of the marriages took place on the heavenly Maldive Islands, after Battuta got over his horror at the skimpy islander outfits: "When I was a religious judge there, I tried to put an end to this practice and ordered them to wear clothes, but I met with no success."
Death threatened Battuta at every turn. Once he was so ill with a high fever that he tied himself to his horse's saddle so he wouldn't fall. Hot winds could dry up every source of water; the price of a mouthful reached enormous sums. Deathly cold would force him to wear so many bulky layers that he had to be lifted onto his horse. In a pirate attack he lost everything except for a single pair of pants, and in a bandit attack he was wounded by arrows.
But he also met with extraordinary hospitality. Once when he was lost for days without food or drink, his feet swollen and bleeding, a stranger approached and carried Battuta on his back to shelter. He seldom went hungry. A simple meal would be bread, cheese, olives, fresh dates. He enjoyed melons, white apricots, coconuts, anything sweetened with sugar or carob, and a kind of lizard with its insides replaced with turmeric.
After thirty years Battuta returned for good to Morocco, deciding it was "the best of countries," though it was one of the few places he had never explored.
When the Sultan commanded him to record his memories, Battuta produced a vivid account. Centuries later, it reached Europe, revealing a wealth of information about large parts of the Muslim world, enlarging everyone's horizons.
Today, if you travel to Dubai, a city on the Arabian Peninsula, you can visit the gigantic Ibn Battuta Mall, named for this most famous of Arabic explorers.
CHAPTER 4Everyone Likes Presents
ZHENG HE
Born in Yunnan Province, China, 1371(?) Died in Calicut, India, 1433
Chinese commander of seven voyages to thirty countries
It was good to be trusted by the emperor Yongle, who tended to execute anyone who challenged him. No one was more reliable than Zheng He. He had lived in the emperor's household since he was ten, when he had been captured by generals of the Ming dynasty of China, the richest and most populated country on earth.
Zheng became trusted both inside the palace (he rose to director of the palace servants, which entitled him to wear robes of red, not blue like the others) and outside the palace, as a courageous officer in the army.
Some say he was seven feet tall, with a waist five feet around. He had a voice like a gong, rough skin like an orange peel, and a powerful gaze with eyebrows like swords. He grew up a devout Muslim, later became a devout Buddhist, and also worshiped the Taoist sea goddess Tianfei, protector of sailors against the giant dragons believed to live under the surface.
Finally the emperor rewarded the thirty-five-year-old Zheng with a plum job: commander in chief of a most unusual voyage, bearing gifts and gathering information in Asia, India, Arabia, and Africa. Chinese scholars gave Zheng the latest Arab and Hindu discoveries about navigation and geography.
No expense was spared for his fleet of sixty ships. They may have been the biggest wooden boats ever built — huge "treasure ships" (filled with the gifts) guarded by smaller ones. A complex system of flags, lanterns, gongs, drums, and carrier pigeons enabled the ships to communicate with one another.
Zheng's crew was massive — about thirty thousand men, mostly professional soldiers, living in comfortable quarters. Also aboard were 180 doctors to collect medicinal herbs wherever they went; judges to settle disputes and punish those who broke rules; translators; farmers to grow vegetables and keep everyone healthy; and one officer whose only duty was to tell fortunes.
The countries Zheng visited got the finest silks and brocades with dragon and phoenix designs, paper money, and more. Countries also sent back their own presents, such as pepper, worth its weight in gold, and animals unknown in China: ostriches, zebras, camels, Arabian horses. Elegant giraffes caused the biggest sensation.
Zheng and his men were showered with money and promotions when they returned to China. The emperor hosted banquets in their honor, with more food and drink than was humanly possible to consume.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Lives of the Explorers"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Kathleen Krull.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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