The Encyclopedia of Preserved People: Pickled, Frozen, and Mummified Corpses from Around the World - Hardcover

Natalie Jane Prior has published several award-winning books for young readers in Australia including fiction, nonfiction, and picture books. Before dedicating herself fulltime to writing, she was a librarian.
From the Hardcover Library Binding edition.

Grade 5-8-This compendium is organized geographically and arranged alphabetically. The catalog of the macabre includes Africa (ancient Egyptians); Australasia, Asia, and the Pacific (e.g., Lady Dai and George Mallory); Europe (such as Iron Age bog bodies and Lenin); North America (Einstein's brain and the ill-fated Franklin expedition); and South America (Juanita the Ice Lady and Eva Peron). A final chapter lists techniques (such as DNA testing), tools (CAT scans), and topics (ancient diseases). A number of see-also references appear throughout. Small black-and-white and full-color photos, period engravings, and modern watercolors provide a measure of "ickiness" that should satisfy modestly demanding ghouls. The text is conversational in tone, and gleefully chatty when exploring such juicy topics as "Exploding Kings and Queens," but most entries are quite short. The endpapers provide global location maps for the corpses. Strangely missing from the list for further reading are such eloquent gems as James M. Deem's Bodies from the Bog (Houghton, 1998), Johan Reinhard's Discovering the Inca Ice Maiden (National Geographic, 1998), Christopher Sloan's Bury the Dead (National Geographic, 2002), and Donna M. Jackson's The Bone Detectives (Little, Brown, 1996). An attention-grabbing and browsable read.
Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY
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