Giants in the Land - Hardcover

Appelbaum, Diana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395647207 ISBN 13: 9780395647202

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers, 1993

Synopsis

A story of the human ingenuity needed to turn the Giant Pines of New England into masts for the great British Navy.

About this title

About the Author:

Award-winning artist Michael McCurdy has illustrated more than 170 books for adults and children. His books often explore America’s past, bringing to life its history and traditions. He lives with his wife, Deborah, on a farm in western Massachusetts.

From Booklist:

Gr. 2-4. Much more than a simple ecology lesson, this picture book dramatizes both the power of nature and the drive of human technology. Giant white pine trees once grew in the New England woods for thousands of years; today there are none. In the eighteenth century, the British needed the trees for their great warships, ships that required masts 40 inches wide at the base, 120 feet tall, and absolutely straight. The facts are astonishing: Forests had to be cleared; roads had to be cut straight because a mast tree couldn't bend around a corner; special mast ships carried the great logs to England. The prose is restrained and lyrical, precise about the mechanism by which the trees were marked, cut down, and hauled to the sea, and romantic about the giants that lived on this land. McCurdy's dramatic black-and-white scratchboard drawings, many spread across two pages, capture the sweep and detail of the landscape, the anguish of the tree felling, and the huge, lumbering procession of the oxen straining at their chains to drag each heavy trunk to the sea. There's no hectoring about the environment, but the sense of grief is manifest; the trees are gone. And then the quiet surprise of the ending: "Step into the woods. . . . Giants are growing." Hazel Rochman

About this edition

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0395647207
• ISBN 13: 9780395647202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: McCurdy Michael