The House of Wisdom Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The House of Wisdom Book

Young Ishaq wanders through 9th-century Baghdad's packed marketplace, filled with curiosity, awed by the many different people and languages. "They speak so strangely," he whispers to his father. His father, a translator and scribe who works in the caliph's library, the House of Wisdom, replies sagely, "You may not understand them, but that does not mean they have nothing to say." Mother-and-daughter team Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland weave a beautiful, timeless, and true-life tale, recounting how the House of Wisdom in Baghdad (the then capital of the Islamic Empire) gathered and preserved manuscripts from all around the known world--at a time when Europe languished in the Dark Ages. Ishaq grows up in this vast library with his father, knowing how prized these ancient books are (the caliph gives his father a manuscript's weight in gold for translating it!) but not fully grasping the importance of the legacy they represent. Only after he leads an expedition himself in search of books, "to Cordova and Samarkand, to India and China," does he understand. Heide and Gilliland's text dovetails with the rich, luminous illustrations by Harry Potter illustrator Mary GrandPré, which exceed even DK Publishing's demanding visual standards. (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul HughesRead More

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  • Product Description

    Timely and timeless -- this illuminating, luminous picture book brings ancient Baghdad to life as it tells the story of one boy's discovery of the power of the written word. This is the story of Ishaq, a young boy in ninth-century Baghdad. And it is the story of the House of Wisdom. More than a house, more than a library, more even than a palace, the House of Wisdom was at the very center of the new ideas that flourished in Baghdad. It was here that thousands of scholars gathered to read, to exchange ideas, and to translate the dusty manuscripts that were brought by camel and ship from all over the world. Ishaq cannot understand why ancient words, words from faraway places, can cause such excitement. Then he embarks on a difficult journey seeking lost manuscripts. But it is what he discovers when he returns that ignites his imagination and changes him forever. Lyrical prose and glorious illustrations capture the splendor of Baghdad when it was the center of one of the world's great civilizations. They tell the story of Ishaq's transformation from a bewildered young boy searching for understanding to a brilliant scholar, the greatest translator of Aristotle, whose work preserved Greek thought for civilizations to come.

  • 0789425629
  • 9780789425621
  • Florence P. Heide, Judith H. Gilliland
  • 1 September 1999
  • DK Ink
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 48
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