Most Popular Books by James Rumford

A simplified and illustrated retelling of the exploits of the Anglo-Saxon warrior, Beowulf, and how he came to defeat the monster Grendel, Grendel''s mother, and a dragon that threatened the kingdom.

Shows how important learning is in a country where only a few children are able to go to school.

The story of Sequoyah is the tale of an ordinary man with an extraordinary idea—to create a writing system for the Cherokee Indians and turn his people into a nation of readers and writers. The task he set for himself was daunting. Sequoyah knew no English and had no idea how to capture speech on paper. But slowly and painstakingly, ignoring the hoots and jibes of his neighbors and friends, he worked out a system that surprised the Cherokee Nation—and the world of the 1820s—with its beauty and simplicity. James Rumford’s Sequoyah is a poem to celebrate literacy, a song of a people’s struggle to stand tall and proud.

A Chinese grandfather and his grandson who are captured by the Arab army barter for their freedom by demonstrating the art of papermaking.

In 1802, Jean-Francois Champollion was eleven years old. That year, he vowed to be the first person to read Egypt’s ancient hieroglyphs. Champollion’s dream was to sail up the Nile in Egypt and uncover the secrets of the past, and he dedicated the next twenty years to the challenge. James Rumford introduces the remarkable man who deciphered the ancient Egyptian script and fulfilled a lifelong dream in the process. Stunning watercolors bring Champollion’s adventure to life in a story that challenges the mind and touches the heart.

Calabash Cat, a West African cat, sets out one day to find where the world ends. His adventures take him across a desert, grasslands, a jungle, and the ocean, until he finds what he is looking for. Illustrated in the style of the calabash engravers of the country of Chad, James Rumford’s original tale will keep you thinking long after you have closed the covers of this book—about our one world, and about seeking knowledge and finding wisdom.

Eighty years before Columbus, ships from China explored the world. One discovery the Chinese made is the chee-lin, known today as a giraffe. This rich storybook traces the journey of a chee-lin in a tale of captivity and struggle, friendship and respect. Full color.

A Chadian boy builds a toy truck from things he has found, as a mango tree flowers, then bears fruit following a short rain.

Ibn Battuta was the traveler of his age—the fourteenth century, a time before Columbus when many believed the world to be flat. Like Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta left behind an account of his own incredible journey from Morocco to China, from the steppes of Russia to the shores of Tanzania, some seventy-five thousand miles in all. James Rumford has retold Ibn Battuta’s story in words and pictures, adding the element of ancient Arab maps—maps as colorful and as evocative as a Persian miniature, as intricate and mysterious as a tiled Moroccan wall. Into this arabesque of pictures and maps, James Rumford has woven the story not just of a traveler in a world long gone but of a man on his journey through life.

What was made of rags and bones, soot and seeds? What took a mountain to make? For the answer, travel back to the fifteenth century—to a time when books were made by hand and a man named Johannes Gutenberg invented a way to print books with movable type. Written as a series of riddles and illustrated in the style of medieval manuscripts by an award-winning author and artist, From the Good Mountain will intrigue readers of all ages. On every page there is something surprising to learn about how the very thing you are holding in your hands came to be.

When a tiger and a turtle both want a flower that has fallen to the ground, they argue over it until a fight breaks out between them.

A sheriff in the Old West fights crime with the help of his lucky ten-gallon hat.

An alphabet book which relates the legend of Cadmus, the Phoenician hero who brought the alphabet to Greece and slew a dragon there.

A fable about a group of animals which strives to bring the perfect present to the Indian raja-king''s birthday party. Discusses how the numerals we use originated in India.

As bombs and missiles fall on Baghdad in 2003, a young boy uses the art of calligraphy to distance himself from the horror of war.