Customer Reviews

Statues of Easter Island (Ancient Wonders of the World)

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I hold children's book authors to a somewhat different standard because the reader must depend more on the applicability of the writing given the demographics of the readership but also because young readers are impressionable and may not have ready access to accurate, informative sources. So these types of authors better get it right. This is particularly true when egregious photographic errors occur because younger readers may rely more heavily on pictures than on text. Most importantly, what we don't need, especially where Easter Island is concerned (a subject that has more than its share of misinformation printed about it) is more ignorant or misinformed readers. Because they sometimes go on to become ignorant and misinformed writers.

This book was published in 2006 and, given that there is no shortage of recent, accurate, and reliable information now available on Easter Island, there's no excuse for significant errors to be made in relating its history or how it is depicted it photographs -- but more than half the pages in this book contain errors ... some serious, some not, but all of which undermine the book's value. Here are a few examples:

p. 1 - The red star on the map pointing out the "statues of Easter Island" is more than 200 nautical miles to the east of Easter Island and at least 50 nautical miles south of Sala y Gómez.

p. 6 - The photo of the thatched house is not on Easter Island, nor of an Easter Island design.

p. 6 - Easter Island inhabitants weren't referred to as "Rapa Nui" for nearly a thousand years after their arrival on the island and that term was applied by Tahitian sailors to distinguish Easter Island from the island of Rapa which lies to the west.

p. 8 - Motu Nui is the "rock outcropping" referred to with regard to the Birdman contest -- but it is a full mile, not half a mile, away; the accurate distance, through shark-infested waters, is important in appreciating the determination of the contestants.

p. 10 - To say that rongorongo has "never been deciphered" is not entirely true; parts of it most definitely have (the Zodiac on one of the Honolulu tablets, for example, as well as procreation chants on most others).

p. 12 - The photo in the center of the page showing a basalt quarry of sorts does not appear to be from Easter Island. Basalt quarries on the island have been geologically mapped at Terevaka, Rano Kau, and Poike -- none of which resembles this photo; if anything, it looks like a stock photo of basalt formations from a place like Fingal's Cave in Scotland.

p. 15 - It is inaccurate to say "a few moai face out to sea"; in point of fact, they all face towards ceremonial centers; only one group of moai technically faces the sea because the ceremonial center is between the platform and the sea. Moreover, the photo accompanying this statement is of a moai that was re-erected in modern times and is not in its original place, nor does it even face out to sea -- but inland (to the west, to be precise).

p. 17 - The red scoria statues as depicted in photos on this page are not from Easter Island but from the island of Ra'ivavae, which is about 500 nautical miles south of Tahiti.

p. 20 - The Easter Islanders don't make boats from totora reeds, just floats used during the Tapati festival, nor do they call the reeds by the name "totora"; they are known on the island as "nga'atu".

p. 21 - The totora reed discussion features photos not from Easter Island but probably from Peru or Bolivia.

p. 24 - The island is not used to raise sheep for wool or any other purposes; the sheep were removed in the 1980s in order to protect archaeological sites and to salvage what was left of vegetation damaged by their presence.

p. 24 - The number of tourists for 2006 is listed as 24,000. Hardly. There were officially 49,826 tourists who visited Easter Island that year.

p. 24 - The island did not form from a single volcanic eruption but from three, the first about 2.5 million years ago, the second about 2 millions ago, the third about 300,000 years ago.

p. 26 - The photograph of the airplane is an American Airlines jet; only LAN flies to and from Easter Island.

p. 27 - Despite early accounts that claimed Easter Islanders were taken to the guano mines on the Chincha Islands of Peru, extensive genealogical and other research has failed to produce any reliable evidence that the islanders were ever taken there. They were abducted, of course, and there is abundant evidence that the kidnapped islanders were forced to work as indentured servants of wealthy Peruvian continental land owners, however. Just not in the guano mines or on the Chincha Islands.

p. 28 - While the meaning of the moai kava kava carvings has been variously interpreted over the years, to say they are "ghosts" is simplistic at best; legends state that they were inspired by the appearance of "aku aku" spirits but other explanations refer to them as representations of the dead or dying as indicative of conditions of starvation and social upheaval on the island at the time.

p. 30 - Easter Sunday in April 1722 was on the 5th, not the 6th.