The Complete Weather Resource

Résumé du livre

This readable work profiles 171 explorers and discoverers for middle-school readers. It is based on the 300 entries in Explorers and Discoverers of the World RBB Jl 93. The geographers, oceanographers, and other assorted travelers are alphabetically arranged by best-known name with an index in each volume covering the whole set. Unfortunately, pagination is not noted on the spines of volumes. There are also indexes by country of origin and area explored. Each entry begins with birth and death dates, locations, and a sentence describing the subject's achievement ('Anne Royle Taylor, an English missionary, was the first European woman to travel in Tibet, at a time when the country was forbidden to all Westerners' ). Entries range from three to five pages, usually accompanied by a drawing or photo of the explorer. Effort has been made to include women and non-Westerners, such as Cheng Ho, Annie Smith Peck, Isabella Bird, and James Chuma, along with the well-known Stanley, Mackenzie, Cabot, and Cousteau. There are even entries for Hubble, Sputnik, and Challenger that discuss their crews collectively. The introduction makes clear that a discoverer was not necessarily 'the first human ever to have been there.' World maps are included at the beginning of the book, and area maps are part of a few entries. The text is readable and interesting for upper-elementary through middle-school students. Readers may wonder whether crossing the 'Takla Makan' means a mountain range or lake (it's Taklamakan Desert on the map), but most information is clearly presented. Unusual in a book for this age level is how frankly rivalries and hostilities are described. The reader gets a feel for how competitive Speke and Burton were and how life-threatening were journeys such as Susie Rijnhart's. Although no sources are listed, this is a worthwhile purchase where students and faculty regularly look for information on explorers.-