A South Seas
p. 81 · Read in the full issue
think-maker
The publishers call it a “think-making book for child ren”. But Ships and Seafarers of the South Pacific, written and illustrated by Victor Hatcher, is just the sort of book about the Pacific that this reviewer would like to do, if she could draw (which she cannot).
The text is incidental and minimal. The story of man’s conquest of the 12 million square mile Pacific is told in diagrams and pictures. Generally one page of instruction and fact faces one full-page illustration with a pixie quality that appeals to kids of all ages from eight to 80.
The ships go all the way from the big canoes of the ancient Polynesian migrations to P & O's first Chusan, which used steam and sail to run the first regular mail service to Australia in 1852. The humans cover the same period Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, ex plorers, Australia’s First Fleet, the chart makers, the whalers, the traders and the immigrants.
It has 32 big pages in full colour.—JT.
(Ships And Seafarers Of The
SOUTH PACIFIC. Collins. $2.50).