Pharaoh's Boat

Houghton Mifflin, Spring, 2009

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PHARAOH'S BOAT is an immensely gratifying book as skillfully crafted and assembled as its subject. In this beautifully written and illustrated account, David Weitzman weaves past and present into a truly satisfying story of technology and discovery, scholarship and craft. While much of the art is done in the familiarly flat Egyptian style, the journey on which it takes us is absolutely four dimensional.

David Macaulay

California Readers 2011 Book Collections for School Libraries

American Library Association Notable Book 2010

Children's Africana Book Awards, 2010 Best Book for Young Children

Junior Library Guild Featured Selection

In precise yet at times almost poetic language, Weitzman explains the whys of building a vessel for the pharaoh and in amazing textual and illustrative detail shows the way it was accomplished–everything from the tools used to the placement and lashing of the timbers.

Booklist (starred review)

The paintings' earth tones accentuated by bright greens and blues, are both appropriate for the subject matter and pleasing to the eye; the boat becomes more complete with each turn of the page. Pharaoh's Boat offers a unique glimpse into a common activity in ordinary ancient Egyptian life (boat building) instead of being just another book about mummies and pyramids.

School Library Journal (starred review)

Weitzman, no stranger to transportation design (A Subway for New York, 2005, etc.), gracefully merges past and present as he describes the intricate steps of how the boat was first built–and rebuilt so many thousands of years later. Both ship and story are a mastery of precise craftsmanship.

 Kirkus (starred review)

Although Weitzman is perhaps best known for his work in black and white, the coloring in this book is as elegant as the line work, the pictures subtly using different styles to distinguish the two time periods.

 Horn Book