Journey of Silk

John S. Major (author)

Stephen Fieser (illustrator)

The Silk Route: 7,000 Miles of History

HarperCollins, 1995

John S. Major offers the youngest picture book audiences a good, solid introduction to a rather complex, multifaceted topic, the Silk Roads. Three strategies help condense and focus the material. First, a decision to narrow the time period to circa 700 CE. Second, the highlighting of silk as a form of currency, as a commodity, and as a luxury material. And third, frequent use of double-page spreads introducing a single location, such as Chang'an or Herat or Byzantium, for example. Major's descriptions seem generally accurate. One might quibble about whether true porcelain had been developed at that time and heavily traded. Ceramics would have been the more appropriate term. A more serious concern would be about the use of loaded language. While calling the Tang dynasty "glorious" does not raise eyebrows, I am less comfortable with the new mosque described as "looming" over the city market. Whether intentionally or not, biases make their way subtly into the story. Likewise, in this narrative, nomads are a malevolent force against "brave and enterprising" merchants. Perhaps somewhere out there is book that tells the other view of the pressures of sedentary empires to capture and control the pasturelands upon which the nomadic peoples rely. Still, I thought both Major's writing and Stephen Fieser's illustrations were engaging and informative for young people.