Jessica Gunderson grew up in the small town of Washburn, North Dakota. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of North Dakota and an MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has written more than fifty books for young readers. Her book Ropes of Revolution won the 2008 Moonbeam Award for best graphic novel. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and cat. Jeffrey Ebbeler has been creating art for children for almost a decade. He loves the creative potential of storybook art. He has given many lectures and demonstrations in grade-schools, colleges, and museums about the process of bringing words to life through pictures. He has worked on a variety of projects including illustrations for magazines, CD covers, and book covers as well as paper engineering for pop-up books, creating large scale murals for schools and churches, and sculpting puppets and preforming for several marionette theaters. He and his wife Eileen both attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati. They currently live in Cincinnati with their twin daughters Olivia and Isabel. Jeffrey signed with artist agent Portfolio Solutions LLC. This has been a successful partnership and has allowed Jeffrey to leave his long held position as an art director for the children's book department at Publication's International ltd. to work as a freelance illustrator full time.
The year is 1804 and you're Private George Shannon, a 17-year-old from Kentucky. Your mission? To join Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and "find a route to the Pacific Ocean, following the rivers as closely as possible." Much cooler than simply reading about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, right? The titles in the Way It Was series offer role-playing (in the form of a school play) as an entry point to history. A narrator, who appears on most spreads, speaks directly to the reader, telling him or her how to feel ("you're not scared") and providing commentary as each crisis--mosquitoes! frostbite!--presents itself. Sidebars on each page supply the hard facts, while cartoonlike images reflect the playful tone of the main narration. Your Life as a Private on the Lewis and Clark Expedition means facing the brutal winter at Fort Mandan and coming face-to-face with grizzly bears. In Your Life as a Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt, kids become Pharaoh Nebibi, living in 2401 BCE, who needs to supervise the construction of a pyramid. From there, readers wend through life in ancient Egypt, encountering tomb robbers and war. While the cartoon illustrations can make the Native Americans and Egyptians look stereotypical at times, for the most part, they're lively and engaging. A ton of fun and the closest kids can get (so far) to a time machine.-- "Booklist"
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