Matthew Henson: Arctic Adventurer

First Biographies

by Blake Hoena, Charles Barnett III (Illustrator), Phil Miller (Illustrator)

A biography discussing the life story of explorer Matthew Henson and his expedition to the North Pole with Robert Peary. Written in graphic-novel format.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Graphic Novels, Comics, Picture Books

32 pages, Paperback

Published December 31, 2005

About the author

Blake A. Hoena grew up in central Wisconsin, where, in his youth, he wrote stories about robots conquering the Moon and trolls lumbering around in the woods behind his parents house, and the fact that the trolls were hunting for little boys had nothing to do with Blake’s pesky brothers. Later, he moved to Minnesota to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Since graduating, Blake has written more than thirty books for children, including retellings of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the Perseus and Medusa myth. Most recently, he’s working on a series of graphic novels about two space alien brothers, Eek and Ack, who are determined to conquer our big blue home.

--from the author's website

Reviews

[Kylie Combs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series is pretty great. It ties in the accessibility and appeal of graphic novels while adding in historical and biographical accounts of important or lesser known people. I had never heard of Matthew Henson, and arctic adventures are fascinating to me (especially considering how much I hate the cold!). This series also offers a lot of great features in the back- More about the subject, a glossary, internet sites, reading suggestions, bibliography, and and index, which would be great to use for examples of these features. They circulate pretty well in our school, especially when put on display.

In Parks collection

Activities
-use as an introduction to research or biography
-go over text features in back, use as a scavenger hunt activity
-tie in other biographies or even graphic novels
-write a graphic novel about your life

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just heard about Matthew Henson today, I wanted detail, and this is the book that we had checked in at the library. It's a great intro to this amazing man. I loved that there was a bibliography and books for further reading. It was frustrating to see such a skilled man get passed up for jobs, etc, just because he was black, so I hope that this book will help kids understand the injustice of racism then and now.

[Ms. Arca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Henson is from Washington, D.C.! In addition, he was an incredibly brave, intelligent, hard working man in our history. He discovered the North Pole!!!

I'm angry at my education that I had never heard of such a remarkable man before. I am glad I could start to change that with this book.

Check it out!