1999, DK Publishing, NY
currently OP
40 pgs.
Goodreads rating: 4.07 - 68 ratings
My rating: 4:
Endpapers: peachy/orange
Illustrations: orangy pastels, no white on the very large pages
1st line/s: "Over many lands came caravans of camels, six thousand strong, swaying and rocking as the padded single file across the sands and plains on their way to Baghdad."
My comments: I always get excited when I find a well-written picture book for older kids. This is certainly one of them. Based on history, this is the story of 9th century Baghdad and its books, libraries, scholars, and inquisitive minds. I love that it points out that at this time areas to the west (Europe) were basically uneducated and, perhaps, crude. And when talking about scholars, like Aristotle, coming a thousand years before, the father tells his son, "We are like the leaves of the same tree, separated by many autumns." What a great quote!
Goodreads: This is the true story of Ishaq, a young boy in ninth-century Baghdad. And it is the story of the House of Wisdom. More than a house, more than a library, more even than a palace, the House of Wisdom was at the very center of the new ideas that flourished in Baghdad. It was here that thousands of scholars gathered to read, to exchange ideas, and to translate the dusty manuscripts that were brought by camel and ship from all over the world. Ishaq cannot understand why ancient words, words from faraway places, can cause such excitement. Then he embarks on a difficult journey seeking lost manuscripts. But it is what he discovers when he returns that ignites his imagination and changes him forever.Lyrical prose and glorious illustrations capture the splendor of Baghdad when it was the center of one of the world's great civilizations. They tell the story of Ishaq's transformation from a bewildered young boy searching for understanding to a brilliant scholar, the greatest translator of Aristotle, whose work preserved Greek thought for civilizations to come.
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