Discovering the Iceman (I Was There Books) - Hardcover

Shelley has written six books in the I Was There series, including On Board the Titanic, winner of the 1997 Information Book Award and the 1997 Silver Birch Award, The Buried City of Pompeii, winner of the 1998 Information Book Award, and Discovering the Iceman, winner of the 1997 Mr. Christie Book Award. Shelley lives in Kingston, Ontario. Greg Ruhl's vibrant illustrations appear in a number of books for children, including Westward with Columbus. In the I Was There series, he has also illustrated The Buried City of Pompeii, The Lost Temple of the Aztecs, First on the Moon, and Secrets of the Mummies. Greg lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Grade 3-6. Photographs and text document the finding of a 5300-year-old mummy in the Italian Alps in 1991. The largest section of the book is a fictional re-creation of the man's last days, illustrated with attractive paintings and sidebars that give information on what is known about life in that period and how the Iceman's remains add to this knowledge. The full-color photographs showing the Iceman are fairly gruesome, but those depicting the artifacts found with him are excellent; the inserts and sidebars add information such as how a glacier is created, what conditions were like long ago, etc. The cover painting of the shriveled body emerging from the ice, with a small photo of the mummy's face, will attract the scary-story crowd; the book also could be used for reports on prehistoric life in Europe. Don Lessem's The Iceman (Crown, 1994) is very similar, even to the re-creation of the Iceman's life and last hours; it has fewer photographs but includes one of a wax model of the man's face. David Getz's Frozen Man (Holt, 1994) has a more sedate appearance, fewer illustrations, and more information.?Pam Gosner, formerly at Maplewood Memorial Library, NJ
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.