Historium (Welcome to the Museum Series)

by Jo Nelson, Richard Wilkinson (Illustrator)

Overview

Discover more than 160 exhibits in this virtual museum, open all hours.

Welcome to the museum! There are more than 160 historical artifacts to be discovered in Welcome to the Museum: Historium. Wander the galleries of this museum whenever you wish—it’s open 365 days a year!—and discover a collection of curated objects on every page, accompanied by informative text. Each chapter features a different ancient civilization, from the Silla dynasty of Korea to ancient Rome.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763679842
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/08/2015
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	10.80(w) x 14.60(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Jo Nelson studied modern languages at Cambridge University before becoming a writer of children’s books. She lives and works in Lancashire, England.

Richard Wilkinson is a U.K.-based illustrator who studied at York St John University. He currently resides in Brighton, England.

Editorial Reviews

08/10/2015
In a handsome overview of world antiquities (a companion to Animalium), more than 130 artifacts from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania are grouped into six “galleries” and recreated in illustrations set against colored plates. Nelson contextualizes the objects with overviews of more than a dozen individual cultures, which include the Mayan and Pueblo peoples of the Americas, the Maori, and ancient civilizations of Korea, Persia, Rome, and more. An Aztec “double-headed serpent mosaic” coils horizontally across one spread, allowing readers to get a sense of the thousands of bits of turquoise arranged on the carved wood form. From Stone Age tools to Egyptian canopic jars and an 11th-century Iranian bowl featuring an early calligraphic form of Arabic, Wilkinson’s striking replications and Nelson’s informative descriptions offer insight into objects both sacred and mundane. Ages 8–12. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

This book accomplishes a difficult goal: providing a high-interest visual experience that also has informational depth. A beautiful addition to any elementary or middle school library, this work is the closest readers will come to attending a museum without leaving home.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

From Stone Age tools to Egyptian canopic jars and an 11th-century Iranian bowl featuring an early calligraphic form of Arabic, Wilkinson’s striking replications and Nelson’s informative descriptions offer insight into objects both sacred and mundane.
—Publishers Weekly

...an effective way to pique the interest of history-loving kids.
—Booklist

Inviting.
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

British collaborators and curators Nelson and Wilkinson welcome viewers into their oversize museum, divided into galleries of artifacts from diverse ancient cultures. After explaining the meaning and “history” of “archaeology,” Nelson provides overlapping timelines so readers can see temporal relationships among the selected civilizations. Since Africa’s home to the oldest recorded human inhabitants, the museum tour begins in the African Gallery. From Southern and Western Africa, museumgoers proceed to Ancient Egyptian exhibits, notable for the exquisite Nefertiti head and a gilded mummy mask. Next stop the Americas! Nelson and Wilkinson connect the massive stone and jade items of the Olmec and Maya, to the much later Hopewell stone and mica artifacts, and finally to today’s Pueblo ceramics; a giant Aztec turquoise serpent mosaic is both beautiful and awe-inspiring. The Asian Gallery focuses mostly on India and China, though introducing briefly Ancient Japan and Korea. Europe fascinates for its Celtic gold, Greek painted pottery, and a Roman gladiator’s iron helmet alongside a portrait of a surprisingly modern-looking female writer with her tablets. Probably less familiar to most visitors will be the galleries for the Middle East and Oceania. Certainly relevant in a global world, these artifacts should be carefully explored to learn about their origins and meanings. Especially arresting are the intricate Mesopotamian sculpture of a standing goat and the carved and decorated wooden paddle from Melanesia. With so much on view, examining the artifacts in detail will take time. Just as visitors could hardly devour a complete museum in one visit, so readers will need to spread out their visits here, depending on their interests and research needs. (A sturdy table with a bookstand to hold the heavy tome at an angle would be helpful, too.) Nelson offers a lucid overview of each culture and an explanation of each artifact’s significance; though these may be too detailed for younger visitors, they will surely fascinate more sophisticated readers (and their parents). Displayed against rich background colors, English artist Wilkinson’s astounding illustrations are digitally painted from photographic models, with exquisite attention to form and decoration. Included are a general index, an index of museums and collections where the artifacts may be seen, and the credits for the images, though not nearly enough information is included about Nelson and Wilkinson. Reviewer: Barbara L. Talcroft; Ages 8 up.

Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft

★ 10/01/2015
Gr 4–8—This museum-style exhibition of world culture goes beyond simply covering the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian worlds by encompassing southern African, Polynesian, and Hopewell cultures. The work begins with a general introduction to archaeology and provides a full-spread time line for reference. An index cites the museum locations of the depicted artifacts. The strength of this work is the gorgeous exhibits, presented in full color on oversize pages. Each exhibit begins with a brief overview of a specific culture. The presentation is less cluttered than that of DK's popular "Eyewitness" series, as most pages contain no more than six items. Readers will discover household articles, such as Pueblo jars, as well as large-scale features, including Roman mosaics. Thorough captions provide context. Wilkinson's illustrations of the various artifacts are photorealistic, with exacting detail. Only a few statuary pieces come off as obvious illustrations. The objects stand out on the pages, the backgrounds set in bold, solid colors. The chapters, called "Galleries," are arranged by continent, and the various exhibitions are further broken down into culture groups. In certain galleries, which focus on precise historical periods, the cultural groups are presented chronologically; in the case of America, the section on the Olmec is followed by the Maya and then the Aztecs. This book accomplishes a difficult goal: providing a high-interest visual experience that also has informational depth. VERDICT A beautiful addition to any elementary or middle school library, this work is the closest readers will come to attending a museum without leaving home.—Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant Public Library, IA

School Library Journal

2015-07-27
An oversized album of archaeological treasures, from an early Stone Age hand ax to a 19th-century tiki pendant. Inviting readers to take a sort of virtual museum tour, Nelson gathers over 140 representative artifacts into geographical "galleries." She presents them with both broad opening overviews of their cultural contexts and individual descriptive notes on their features and anthropological significance. The large illustrations are not photos but digital images that are drawn in painstaking detail, colored in subdued or neutral hues, and reproduced on smooth but not polished paper. With further antique formality of design, the dimly but evenly lit objects are suspended against monochrome backgrounds, often several to a "plate," and well-separated from the text. Though the focus is largely on defunct civilizations—Egypt and Mesopotamia to Olmec, Korean Silla, and the Vikings—the author acknowledges survivors such as the Pueblo and indigenous Australians. Readers on this side of the pond may feel slighted, as the gallery devoted to the Americas is the smallest and contains nothing from South America, but both the Torres Strait Islanders and several Polynesian cultures receive nods in the Oceania section. Moreover, rather than usual suspects like the Rosetta Stone or the so-called "Mask of Agamemnon," the objects on display are often less familiar funerary, religious, or decorative objects. Many of the artifacts, particularly the gold ones, look drab, though, and none are either shown to scale or consistently accompanied by measurements. Furthermore, there are no maps or leads to further information. An arbitrary assortment of relics not likely to furnish either the insight or the glimpses of wonder that elevate companion volume Animalium (2014). (timeline, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews