The Quest for Z
The True Story of Explorer Percy Fawcett and a Lost City in the Amazon
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From an award-winning author comes a picture book biography that feels like Indiana Jones for kids!
British explorer Percy Fawcett believed that hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest was an ancient city, lost for the ages. Most people didn’t even believe this city existed. But if Fawcett could find it, he would be rich and famous forever. This is the true story of one man’s thrilling, dangerous journey into the jungle, and what he found on his quest for the lost city of Z.
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Pizzoli takes readers to the pre-GPS era, when "maps of the world still included large blank spots'," and introduces cartographer/explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925 while looking for the remnants of an ancient city deep in the Amazon rainforest. Fawcett dubbed this once-mighty metropolis "Z" maybe, Pizzoli speculates, "because the lost city seemed to be the most remote place in the world, the final stop, like the last letter of the alphabet." As he did in Tricky Vic, Pizzoli combines flat illustrations and elements (like speech balloons) with archival materials, giving the pages the feel of an animated educational film. The narrative can be a little hard to track as Pizzoli recounts the several expeditions Fawcett led for the Royal Geographic Society prior to his private, doomed search for Z. But hardly a page goes by without an enthralling or gory detail, such as the discovery of an expedition scout found "dead, with forty-two arrows in his body," an incident Pizzoli depicts with an image reminiscent of the classic Saul Bass poster for Anatomy of a Murder. Ages 7 10.
