From Publishers Weekly
As an author's note explains, Ahnighito is the name of the enormous meteorite now housed in New York City's Museum of Natural History, transported there from the North Pole in 1897. Conrad (The Tub People) imagines the thoughts and feelings of Ahnighito from "her" arrival on earth to her installation in the museum. As cold years go by at the North Pole, various people take an interest, chipping away at the rock; finally, over a series of winters, members of the Peary expedition haul her to the ocean and heave her onto a ship. Life becomes more interesting as Ahnighito travels to Brooklyn, then across Manhattan to the museum. Conrad vividly evokes the journey with arresting details (e.g., all the ship's compasses pointed only to the meteorite on the journey south). Egielski's familiar art takes on a majestic quality in depicting expanses of snow, and he invests Ahnighito with a powerful beauty. City scenes are robustly populated with the artist's stocky figures, and a sense of jubilation mounts as the meteorite at last finds a home. A note of explanation on meteorities would have been useful, but the book will likely excite readers to seek out more information. Ages 6-9.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 1-2?In 1894, Robert E. Peary's team of explorers discovered a car-sized metallic meteorite in Greenland and, after several aborted efforts, hauled it off to New York City. This would be an intriguing story even if conventionally told, but Conrad makes it unforgettable by choosing the meteorite itself to be the narrator. Named by Peary's young daughter (supposedly after her Inuit nanny), Ahnighito joyfully describes how lonely centuries of isolation come at last to an end as it is levered out of the ice, slowly dragged aboard ship, left to languish for years on a dock in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, then trucked across Manhattan to the American Museum of Natural History, where it rests today in proud splendor. Egielski's stubby-limbed workers strain and grimace with the effort of moving the great lump; their period dress and the cityscape through which they move capture the era's look and flavor expertly. For an object whose lifespan can be measured in millions of years, Ahnighito's point of view seems rather confined, but this wonderfully fresh, energetic tale will still have wide appeal.?John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
