Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian childrens non-fictionHonor Book for the Society of School Librarians Internationals Best Book Award - Social Studies, Grades 7-12
Shortlisted for the Children's Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year
2003 winner of the Mr. Christies Book Award Seal
Shortlisted for the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Childrens Non-fiction
Included on VOYAs ninth annual Nonfiction Honor List
Selected for inclusion in CCBC Choices 2004: the best-of-the-year list published by the Cooperative Childrens Book center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Named Notable Book by the International Reading Associations Childrens Book Award in the intermediate nonfiction category
Road maps; sailors charts; quilts; songlines; gilded parchment covered with jewel-like colors; computer printouts - to guide us through the strange, vast, beautiful, and mysterious frontiers of the world of maps, Val Ross presents the men and women who made them.
Here are some of the unexpected stories of historys great mapmakers: the fraud artists who deliberately distorted maps for political gain, Captain Cook, the slaves on the run who found their way thanks to specially-pieced quilts, the woman who mapped Londons streets, princes, doctors, and warriors. These are the people who helped us chart our way in the world, under the sea, and on to the stars.
With reproductions of some of the most important maps in history, this extraordinary book, packed with information, is as fascinating and suspenseful as a novel.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Val Ross was a renowned journalist and won a National Newspaper Award. She was highly respected throughout the publishing industry for her coverage of books and the people who create them. She was an arts reporter at
The Globe and Mail and her first book,
The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories was nominated for many awards and won the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Childrens non-fiction. Val Ross passed away in 2008.
From the Hardcover edition.