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Young Ishaq wanders through 9th-century Baghdad's packed marketplace, filled with curiosity, awed by the many different people and languages. "They speak so strangely," he whispers to his father. His father, a translator and scribe who works in the caliph's library, the House of Wisdom, replies sagely, "You may not understand them, but that does not mean they have nothing to say."

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Young Ishaq wanders through 9th-century Baghdad's packed marketplace, filled with curiosity, awed by the many different people and languages. "They speak so strangely," he whispers to his father. His father, a translator and scribe who works in the caliph's library, the House of Wisdom, replies sagely, "You may not understand them, but that does not mean they have nothing to say."

Mother-and-daughter team Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland weave a beautiful, timeless, and true-life tale, recounting how the House of Wisdom in Baghdad (the then capital of the Islamic Empire) gathered and preserved manuscripts from all around the known world--at a time when Europe languished in the Dark Ages. Ishaq grows up in this vast library with his father, knowing how prized these ancient books are (the caliph gives his father a manuscript's weight in gold for translating it!) but not fully grasping the importance of the legacy they represent. Only after he leads an expedition himself in search of books, "to Cordova and Samarkand, to India and China," does he understand.

Heide and Gilliland's text dovetails with the rich, luminous illustrations by Harry Potter illustrator Mary GrandPr�, which exceed even DK Publishing's demanding visual standards. (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul Hughes

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