ADVENTURES ON THE ANCIENT SILK ROAD

For more than 2,000 years travelers have been making their way through central Asia along what we now call “The Silk Road.” Galloway introduces that network of trade routes between China and India and west to Egypt and Europe through three such travelers: the Chinese monk Xuanzang, looking for Buddhist manuscripts and relics in India in the seventh century; the warrior Genghis Khan, creating and enlarging his Mongol empire in the 12th; and the merchant Marco Polo, carrying gifts from the Pope to Kublai Khan in China in the 13th. Readers drawn in by the action of the dramatic opening scene, in which a bandit chief threatens the peaceful monk with a bloodstained sword, will find much to appreciate in the lively storytelling, the wealth of detail and the boxes that add background information. Design features, including well-reproduced photographs and paintings, hand-drawn maps and use of color accents, add interest to the text. Finally, a substantial list of further reading adds to the informational value of this intriguing title. (index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)