Hidden Under the Ground - Hardcover

Peter Kent has written and illustrated a successful series of history books for schoolchildren as well as illustrating many other books. He used to teach history but when he found the children were more interested in copying his pictures from the board than writing essays he decided it was time to becom an illustrator, which he has been for several years. He lives in Norwich, a fine city with many layers of history.

Across a dozen big double-spread pages Peter Kent has drawn sections of the underground world of life, chosen to span a wide range of what some animals and many peoples have done there--or at least imagined. These works are not like any home basement, but large and complex. He draws with an informal style; human figures are small, but details are savored, and some of the scenes are humorous. Moles, badgers and rabbits dig impressive branching tunnel apartments for such small animals. The representation of medieval views of afterlife underground has plenty of pitchfork-wielding red devils but uses serious ideas of old artists to show us more imaginative and dreadful tormentors, one a lobster with a flame-throwing tail. There are mines, caves, a subterranean village, a royal tomb and a dungeon, too. You don't even want to see the rock-lined oubliettes, the prisoner bottled up alone underground, thrown bread and water daily down through the bottleneck, and otherwise forgotten. The subway station is lively and rather London-like. Most of these drawings, however, are not of specific places but are meant to reflect the typical. The city street underground is most interesting: it has water mains and sewers old and new, large and small, and a plethora of cables, tubes and pipes, with more on the way. Note the roots of big trees, spread almost as wide as their limbs extend aboveground. Deep-buried, unexploded bombs below streets are not rare where air war has raged, though unknown in the lucky U.S.A. On the other hand, a well-manned missile silo is on view, not a souvenir of an old war but a harbinger of attack that will not, we hope, come. A specific modern hydroelectric power plant is shown beside a Swiss lake. Extra pages offer digging tools, from wheelbarrows to tunnel borers, celebrities of the underground, and other extensions to complete an attractive book for mid-grade readers.