The Longitude Prize

As I read this wonderful book, I wondered how many good books I've missed out on simply because they were on the Young Adult shelf. Actually, I found this book in the juvenile section of our library. And I'm so glad I did! Many YA books make a great read because the prose is straightforward and unmarred by the literary flourishes that so often muddle books for the adult market. And -- no small point -- they have pictures! This story of the eighteenth-century quest to claim "The Longitude Prize," a huge sum of money (equal to $12 million today) offered to the person who could solve the sticky problem of how to determine longitude at sea, has both of these qualities. The text is simple but compelling and the illustrations are entertaining. In fact, the one drawback I found to Dava Sobel's very arresting tale of the same quest, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time was its lack of illustrations. In a story that revolves around intricate "sea clocks" made by Yorkshireman John Harrison, you want to know what the machines looked like. Joan Dash and Dusan Petricic showed me! (I could also take a field trip to the observatory at Greenwich, England, where they're displayed. Even better!) This is the second YA book I've really enjoyed. The first was a fictionalization of the Noah's ark story -- Not the End of the World -- and I'll be sure to look for others. It's time to enjoy my second childhood!

A hugely captivating book, Dash conveys the wonderfully interesting and historically important tale with magnitude but truly gets the point across. For all you people that don't normally read non-fiction books, and to the people that do, I strongly suggest you read this book!

"The Longitude Prize," by Joan Dash, is a wonderful book for children, 9 to 12 years old, about the 18th century race for an accurate method of determining a ship's longitude. The author makes history come alive and explains how Britain's Parliament offered a prize of 20,000 pounds (equal to $12 million today) to anyone who found an accurate method of determining longitude at sea. As Mrs. Dash explains, the prize went unclaimed for fifty years. During that time, two competing systems arose for finding longitude; one was supported by scientists and astronomers, based on the movement of the moon. The other method was created by a village carpenter, John Harrison, using a seagoing clock. John Harrison was self-educated and had no formal credentials, so the Board of Longitude fought him "tooth and nail," when he offered his chronometer and claimed the prize. Mrs. Dash makes the race for the prize an exciting one. She shows the historical framework of shipwrecks, politics, voyages of exploration, and John Harrison's persistence against great odds, and (quoting the book jacket) "his lifelong struggle for recognition of a brilliant invention." My 10-year-old son loved this book!

I am informing you that your listing is incorrest: the book cannot be out of stock, because it is not yet printed: it is expected to be out in September 2000. This is not a review.