Lives of the Explorers: Discoveries, Disasters (And What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Lives of the Explorers: Discoveries, Disasters (And What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull
The latest in Krull’s popular and charming Lives of … series offers a promise of dangerous adventure and doesn’t disappoint. Krull makes her way through seventeen chronologically arranged entries, covering explorers from the well known (Columbus, Magellan, James Cook, Sally Ride), to the somewhat familiar (Zheng He, Mary Kingsley, Matthew Henson), to those in need of more kid-lit attention (Richard Francis Burton, Isabella Bird, the father and son Piccards). The entries on Leif Ericson, Henry Hudson, and Burton are notably shorter than the rest, but all include gossipy bits that don’t hit the textbooks and retain the author’s winning tone of confiding secrets that other writers won’t. Thus we find just how cruel Magellan was to his crew, how many wives and children Ibn Battuta left behind on his travels, how shabbily Arctic explorer Robert Peary treated his colleague Henson, [End Page 36] and how Kingsley spent the night in the company of bagged body parts. 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. The list for further reading focuses on adult works and will be of limited value to kids who immediately want to find out more. But isn’t that what librarians (and—sigh—Google) are for?
