By Pam Conrad
Columbus's first crossing, kept as a day-by-day diary by the ship's boy, who sees exactly what the men around him are doing and can't stop any of it.
Pedro de Salcedo gets a place on the Santa Maria because he can read and write, which almost nobody else aboard can, and he keeps a journal for his mother. Eighty pages, one entry at a time. The water goes on and on, the men start muttering about turning back, and no land comes. Then it does. What Pedro writes down after that is the part that stays with a child. The people on the beach are kind and bring gifts. The men Pedro sails with start figuring out what can be taken. Columbus lets the islanders keep believing his crew are angels sent from God, and raises a crossbow to show them what it does. Pedro is not brave and does not fix anything. On Christmas night he falls asleep at the tiller and wrecks the Santa Maria on a reef, and the crew turn on him for it. He writes that down too.
Eighty pages, one short entry to a page, big print, illustrations throughout. It's one of the easier books a nine-year-old will be handed that is doing something this hard. Conrad never tells your child what to make of Columbus, and she never lets Pedro make a speech. He just writes down what he sees, in the order he sees it, and the feeling builds on its own: a boy realizing the men he's been sailing with are not who he thought they were. Your child works that out from the evidence, the same way Pedro does.