The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories

By Val Ross

Book Overview

Winner of the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian children's non-fiction

Honor Book for the Society of School Librarians International's 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. Christie's Book Award Seal

Shortlisted for the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-fiction

Included on VOYA's ninth annual Nonfiction Honor List

Selected for inclusion in CCBC Choices 2004: the best-of-the-year list published by the Cooperative Children's Book center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Named Notable Book by the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award in the intermediate nonfiction category

Road maps; sailor's 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 history's 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 London's 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0887769330
• ISBN13: 9780887769337
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Tundra Books (NY)
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.9" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

A lively coverage of maps

Val Ross' Road To There is a book on cartography and tells of the men and women who made maps, from road maps to sailor's charts. Road To There is a lively coverage of maps, from fraud artists who distorted maps for political gain to slaves who escaped to freedom from pieced quilts. An unusual, intriguing book, readers of all agens (many an adult!) will relish Road To There!

An informed and informative history book

The Road To There: Mapmakers And Their Stories by Val Ross is an informed and informative history book for young readers that tells of famous mapmakers throughout the centuries, from great sailors of legend to the unknown heroes who secretly passed on directions along the Underground Railroad through quilts. Black-and-white and color photographs nicely embellish this absorbing and highly recommended anthology showcasing diverse human endeavors to chart the unknown.

Feast of Fascinating Facts

This book held my interest from first page to last; Isaac Asimov could not have done a better job on this intrinsically fascinating subject. There are answers here to questions I've wondered about all my life, and stories I'll remember as long as I live. Ross has John McPhee's clean spare style, and his knack of involving you totally in things you thought you already knew something about. I happened to read this the day after seeing an hour-long Ken Burns documentary about Lewis and Clark, and Ross made their story far more interesting to me in a single chapter.