From School Library Journal
Grade 1-4–One summer morning, a family of silk traders leaves Xi'an to begin their yearlong journey on the Silk Road in China. As the seasons change, they travel and trade their silk for various products along the route. They pass through an ever-changing landscape–huge sand dunes surrounding the oasis at Dunhuang, the vineyards and grape-drying huts of Turpan, and the high mountains near Kashgar where they sell their silk at the famous Sunday market and prepare to return home. Told in pleasant, well-crafted verse with a chorus of two sentences at the bottom of each spread, the story is engaging and generally informative. The short descriptions of places visited are accurate, both in the story and in the appended information about the Silk Road and the making of silk. However, life in a caravan is romanticized, especially in the illustrations, and no dates are given for what is clearly a historical tale. In addition, no sources or bibliography are included. The illustrations are bright and colorful, depicting a world much more beautiful than it is in reality. The artist used watercolor, graphite, and collage, often with marbled or decorative papers of vivid hues, which lend a brilliant richness to the pictures. Despite its drawbacks, this book is an excellent way to introduce the trade route. For older readers, John S. Major's
The Silk Route: 7,000 Miles of History (HarperCollins, 1996) provides a more comprehensive introduction.
–Barbara Scotto, Michael Driscoll School, Brookline, MA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gr. 1-3. With text in verse and a sing-along refrain, "We're going on a caravan, a bumpy, humpy caravan / We're riding on a caravan to places far away," this targets an audience younger than most books on the Silk Road. Krebs writes from the perspective of a Chinese family from Xi'an, recounting its year-long journey to deliver precious silks to a bazaar at Kashgar. Though informative, the lengthy lines of singsong verse may mimic the plodding of a long journey overmuch, and Cann's bright watercolors too rarely depart from the theme of loaded-up pack animals toiling through the landscape. But the family's thrilling arrival at a bazaar vibrant with silks and tapestries (collaged from gorgeous decorative papers) will fuel kids' enthusiasm for learning more--especially if a well-prepared storyteller extends the experience with sounds from Yo-Yo Ma's 2002 album
The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan. Teachers will welcome a concluding map, an endnote on Chinese silk in legend and history, and travel guide-like briefs on each of the featured cities.
Jennifer MattsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
