Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Man-of-War
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Look inside an 18th-century warship as it sails into battle on the high seas. Packed with extraordinary illustrations, this history book for children covers everything from warship design to navigation.
Biesty's incredible drawings slice through a man-of-war to explore every corner, from the crow's nest to the stinking hold. Packed with fascinating facts and gory details, the pages teem with sailors busy about their duties. Find out how gun crews fired a cannon, examine a surgeon's toolkit, and learn the best way to wriggle the maggots out of the ship's biscuits. Look out, too, for the stowaway on every page. He's the one with spiky hair and there's a reward for his capture!
This absorbing book will have children - and adults - poring over every page. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Man-of-War remains as entertaining as ever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Even the most confirmed landlubbers may find themselves chanting ``Yo-ho-ho!'' by the time they've reached the last of Biesty's 10 uncannily well-executed spreads, each of which shows a cross-section of a 100-gun man-of-war modeled after Admiral Nelson's flagship, the HMS Victory , built in 1765. The same thorough research and meticulous artistry that distinguished Platt and Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections lend this volume the appearance of inexhaustible wealth: the oversize pages combine minutely detailed illustrations with succint yet highly evocative text. A spread entitled ``Working at Sea,'' for example, contains a cross-section of the middle of the ship (a key indicates the relative location of each cross-section), an introductory paragraph about rigging the ship, captions and 24 text blocks which answer the sort of questions a curious young reader would ask, from the basic (how do the sails work?) to the often unspoken (how are the dead buried at sea?). Various flourishes further enrich the extravaganza: a stowaway is hidden in the art; a glossary and index are included; and a couple of spreads depict the man-of-war in dramatic engagement at sea. Anchors aweigh! Ages 8-up.
