Val Ross’s lively, engaging narrative looks at the social, political, and personal intrigue surrounding the lives of mapmakers from ancient times to the present. Each chapter focuses on a different map or mapmaker. In inviting, conversational prose, the author details what is known about their lives, the beliefs that influenced their work, and the maps themselves. She explains how mapmakers often created maps that supported social, political, or religious beliefs of the times. While some drew their subject as they saw or imagined it, others drew it as they wanted it to be. From the extraordinary friendship between King Roger II of Sicily, a Christian, and his close Muslim friend and mapmaker, Al-Idrisi, to Phyllis Pearsall, who is responsible for the London A-Z street guide used by millions of people today, Ross’s book is a treasure trove of fascinating maps and stories. (Ages 9–14)

Winner of the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian children’s non-fiction

Honor Book for the Society of School Librarians International’s Best Book Award – Social Studies, Grades 7-12

Shortlisted for the Children's Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year

2003 winner of the Mr. Christie’s Book Award Seal

Shortlisted for the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-fiction

Included on VOYA’s ninth annual Nonfiction Honor List

Selected for inclusion in CCBC Choices 2004: the best-of-the-year list published by the Cooperative Children’s Book center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Named Notable Book by the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award in the intermediate nonfiction category


Road maps; sailor’s charts; quilts; songlines; gilded parchment covered with jewel-like colors; computer printouts – to guide us through the strange, vast, beautiful, and mysterious frontiers of the world of maps, Val Ross presents the men and women who made them.

Here are some of the unexpected stories of history’s great mapmakers: the fraud artists who deliberately distorted maps for political gain, Captain Cook, the slaves on the run who found their way thanks to specially-pieced quilts, the woman who mapped London’s streets, princes, doctors, and warriors. These are the people who helped us chart our way in the world, under the sea, and on to the stars.

With reproductions of some of the most important maps in history, this extraordinary book, packed with information, is as fascinating and suspenseful as a novel.


From the Hardcover edition.