From: Jonathan Hunt <jhunt24>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 02:48:53

Well, I finished SIR WALTER RALEGH AND THE QUEST FOR EL DORADO and, as a history major and devout Anglophile, simply fell in love with it. In fact, it's one of my favorite books of the year. On one hand, I'm delighted that it won the Sibert Award and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction, but, on the other hand, I wish it had been named a Printz or Newbery book. How do people view the audience of this book? It seems perfect for older YAs
(ages 14), but I think precocious middle school students (ages 11) would enjoy it as well. I think I would have enjoyed it as a junior high student; I would have needed an impetus, but I would have enjoyed it. I can see it as being extremely high end for the Newbery, but this seems like it should have found a home on the Printz list.

It was great, as others have mentioned, to have Ralegh placed within the larger context of his times, and not just in terms of political events. Someone also mentioned that the voice of the author seemed more apparent, and this distinguished it from other nonfiction. I would qualify that by saying that what we have here is an author who is just as interested in writing intellectual history and cultural history as he is in writing biography and political history. What large ideas and themes shaped Elizabethan culture? And how did Ralegh and his contemporaries seize those ideas and act upon them in a way that changed the course of history? Relevant facts from the historical record are then selectively chosen to answer these questions. The book reads more like a dazzling legal brief than a stodgy, old textbook. And that, I think, is what brings the author's voice to light and separates it from most YA nonfiction.

Needless to say, I anxiously await the other volumes in the trilogy.

Jonathan
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Received on Tue 13 Mar 2001 02:48:53 AM CST