Customer Reviews

Call Me Ahnighito

5 star:		(3)
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One of my students brought this book in to share.We do an extensive rock study in grade two, so I read this book. It is informative, and very well written. The children LOVED it and now want to see the famous "rock" at the museum in New York. I think it's a wonderful book for any grade 2-3 teacher to use.

I'm a docent at the AMNH in New York. I give tours of the museum for visitors and one of my favorite stops is the Ahnighito meteorite. People love to hear the story of Perry's struggle to wrest Ahnighito from Greenland and eventually bring it to the west side of Manhattan.

It's an unusual subject for a book geared to kids. I think this book is wonderfully executed and beautiful to look at. It's covers the key facts from the point of view of the meteorite which gives it a heart. I always knew it had one.

This is one beautiful book! Look at the pictures to see why they say "...illustrated with museum-quality paintings by Caldecott winner Richard Egielski..."These are big 8"x10" prints very suitable for framing. I would buy two copies - one to frame the pictures and the other to read to a young person. My mother did that with my first reading books and I loved to enjoy the illustrations as framed art for years to come. There is one picture with Matt Henson in it, but they forgot to credit it. This is a truly massive meterorite, 70,000 pounds and still today an amazing specimen. Henson and Peary had a heck of a time moving this thing and it's two smaller pieces on a ship - it took several expeditions to finally move the main mass onto a ship. Peary made a sensation in the press when he brought the meteorite to New York. Today it is still a main exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. I know, because as a child I used to climb on it ! when on special days my Mother would drive us in to New York from Connecticut for a day of exploring the great museum. I still recall it's great metallic mass with crater like holes in it's cold, smooth surface. Great first reader, great introduction to Peary & Henson - the most amazing and famous of all Arctic explorers who went on to reach the North Pole in 1909. I hope these authors choose to illustrate that story some day. I'll buy one just to frame the prints!