Amazon.com Review

With so much interest in the raising of the Titanic, young readers will certainly be fascinated with David Macaulay's ambitious Ship. Like the recent movie Titanic, Macaulay uses the present day as a portal to the past--first recounting a diving expedition that leads to the discovery of Magdalena, a fictitious 15th-century wooden ship embedded in a treacherous reef near the Bahamas. Overcoming obstacles from pirate treasure hunters to government bureaucracy, the excavation team manages to piece together the intriguing but ultimately tragic story behind the 400-year-old caravel. Finally, the team hits pay dirt when the ship owner's 1504 diary is miraculously discovered in an archive library in Spain's Seville. At this point the narrative switches into the past, allowing the reader to witness the building of the ship through the voice of the ship's owner--and experience the heart-wrenching escalation of the owner's hopes and dreams. This is what Macaulay does best--highlighting and interweaving the human story that fuels the creation of an object, while masterfully visualizing the event with detailed, historically accurate illustrations. Macaulay fans will appreciate the diverse artistic styles displayed throughout the book, from murky underwater images to highly detailed architectural drawings, sepia-toned journal entries to impressionistic watercolors. Simultaneously, the author eloquently portrays the many voices of this human drama, especially that of the ill-fated ship owner. (Ages 10 and older) --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

In Ship , as in many of his earlier books, Macaulay tells more than one story and does so in more than one way. The book begins with a fictional archeological crew salvaging the remains of a caravel, a 500-year-old sailing ship, from the bottom of the ocean. The tale is related through Macaulay's vivid pencil drawings, through text accompanying the illustrations, and also through documents and letters in the artwork. Though almost no pictures or descriptions of actual caravels survive today, Macaulay shows how archeologists and historians have pieced together an idea of the likely look and construction of these ships. Then, halfway through the book, Macaulay begins another tale--the design, financing, contracting, construction and launch of that same fictional caravel in the year 1405. Subdued watercolors accompany the "diary" of the Spanish merchant who commissioned that ship. Though Macaulay barely portrays the actual voyage, he has nonetheless crafted an exciting story out of the details of marine archeology, historical sleuthing, and the ancient building and equipping of an ocean-going sailing ship. Though the text and book are brief, the depth of the coverage is surprising--Macaulay plays with the relationships between time and color, words and illustrations, and he varies visual perspectives to offer a rich reading experience. Ages 10-up.
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