Uncommon Traveler: Mary Kingsley in Africa - Hardcover

Brown, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618002731 ISBN 13: 9780618002733

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers, 2000

Synopsis

In 1870, an eight-year-old girl named Mary Kingsley lived in a small house on a lonely lane outside London, England. Her mother was bedridden and her father was rarely home. Mary did not go to school. She served as housekeeper, handyman, nursemaid, and servant, for years. In 1893 Mary traveled to West Africa and proceeded to embark on an astonishing journey of discovery. In her high-necked blouse, long skirt, and Victorian boots, she endured the brutal heat and hardships of Africa, and thrived. With luminous watercolors and a lively text, Don Brown tells the fascinating story of a most uncommon woman.

About this title

About the Author

Don Brown is the award-winning author and illustrator of many picture book biographies. He has been widely praised for his resonant storytelling and his delicate watercolor paintings that evoke the excitement, humor, pain, and joy of lives lived with passion. School Library Journal has called him "a current pacesetter who has put the finishing touches on the standards for storyographies." He lives in New York with his family.

www.booksbybrown.com

Instagram: @donsart

From School Library Journal

Grade 1-3-The author of Ruth Law Thrills a Nation (Ticknor & Fields, 1993), Alice Ramsey's Grand Adventure (1997), and Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries (1999, both Houghton) brings another unsung female adventurer to light. Confined in a Victorian manse with bricked up windows, Kingsley spent her young years caring for her bedridden mother and awaiting the intermittent visits of her peripatetic father. Resourceful and independent, she escaped through the books she read in her father's library. Released from her servitude by her parents' death, the 30-year-old woman embarked on extended travels to Africa, where she found her spiritual home and felt a kinship with the native people. She returned to England to write and lecture on her observations. Brown's spare text, filled with perfectly chosen details, gives individuality to a universally appealing tale of a neglected child who eventually triumphs through her own spirit of independence. By incorporating quotes from his subject's writing, the author provides an accurate picture of her common sense, her sense of humor, of wonder, and of self. The sketchy watercolor illustrations accurately convey the dreariness of her childhood, but are less successful in portraying her travels. Dominant hues of gray, brown, green, and blue effectively evoke settings and transitions, but the details in the drawings are as disappointing as the ones in the text are delightful. The human figures are shadowy, with hollow eyes, stiff arms, and pallid complexions. It is unfortunate that the visuals don't support the beauty, excitement, and lushness that so enthralled Kingsley.
Starr LaTronica, Four County Library System, Vestal, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0618002731
• ISBN 13: 9780618002733
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32