Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Castle

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More About This Book

Overview

SEE INSIDE AN AMAZING 14TH-CENTURY CASTLE
From the creators of INCREDIBLE CROSS-SECTIONS
WHY
  • did castles have wooden walkways around the top of their walls?
  • did one castle attacker set fire to 40 dead pigs?
  • was the longbow such a fearsome weapon?

WHO

  • was a "gong farmer"?
  • catapulted animals over the castle walls?
  • ate elaborate dishes of porpoise and peacock?

WHAT

  • was strewn on castle floors?
  • was a quantain?
  • was a squire's job?

Follow the story of life in the castle in both peace and war - and find the enemy spy!

With the same brilliant visual style of Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections: Man-of-War, this lavishly illustrated guide brings youngsters on a fascinating tour of a 14th century castle.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
A knight or a baron may dwell in the 14th-century castle lovingly recreated here, but Platt and Biesty's (Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Man-of-War) latest book is, quite simply, fit for a king. In the style of the previous Cross-Sections titles, each oversized spread shows a cutaway view of an area of a quintessential castle and is organized around a central theme (e.g., ``Building the Castle,'' ``Livestock and Produce,'' ``Weapons and Punishment''). Biesty brings a jeweler's eye to his seemingly infinitely detailed illustrations, while Platt supplies punchy bite-sized text blocks to highlight information about the edifice itself as well as those who lived within its walls. They introduce the ale connor, who would test the purity of the beer by pouring a bit onto a bench and then sitting on it; low-quality beer would be sugary and would glue the connor's leather breeches to the bench. Hunting dogs, Platt states, lived in heated kennels and ate specially baked bread; hot water was such a luxury that even a 13th-century English king bathed no more than once every three weeks. Easy frames of reference (a suit of armor ``cost about the same as a car costs today'') help the reader assimilate these disparate facts, and Biesty and Platt are sure to please the younger members of their audience with their candor about such subjects as latrines and methods of torture. A challenge to find the enemy spy who lurks amid the packed spreads is icing on the cake. Ages 8-up. (Sept.)
Children's Literature - Beverly Kobrin
Kids won't peruse Stephen Beisty's ten Cross-sections of a Castle just once. Neither will you! The spreads, beguilingly margin-to-margin coverage crammed with myriad details of medieval life, will stimulate multiple readings- even when sharp-eyed searchers aren't seeking the enemy spy somewhere within the castle walls. The animated drawings, enriched by Richard Platt's narrative and annotations, will entertain, enlighten, and keep kids fascinated by what went on in and around a 14th century castle-whether or not research on the subject is required.
School Library Journal
Gr 4 Up-Another browsing item extraordinaire from the creators of Man-of-War (Dorling Kindersley, 1993), with huge paintings featuring hundreds of tiny figures scurrying purposefully about a 14th-Century castle's shalls and walls, all surrounded by captions and an array of random facts. Biesty creates a composite fortress, based on Chinon in France and England's Chepstow; he slices the building into 10 sections, and illustrates a particular topic-``Building the Castle,'' ``Trades and Skills,'' ``Weapons and Punishment,'' etc.-in each. The purpose here is less to inform than to entertain; sharp-eyed Waldo fans are invited to track down a spy who sneaks in at the beginning, but if that's too tame, they'll also find diminuitive scenes of torture and bloodshed, latrines in use, hapless ``gong farmers'' shoveling excrement, people unclothed or being doctored, weapons practice, petty crime, and general horseplay. Platt's text follows in the same vein, supplementing generalities about medieval work, life, and social structures with examples chosen for their gross-out value. Most collections will already own more reliable, detailed depictions of castle life, but not on so grand a scale. The wordless opening and closing spreads, in which the castle faces and repels an attacking army, are alone worth the price of the book.-John Peters, New York Public Library
Ellen Mandel
The collaborators on previous titles in Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections series, for example, "Man-of-War" (1993), deliver yet another treasure. This time they cut away eight-foot-thick stone walls to peer inside a fourteenth-century European castle. Platt's succinct notes and labels elaborate on medieval customs, identifying the intricate details of Biesty's pen-and-ink drawings. Each double-page spread focuses on a different aspect of the castle, including its construction, the trades practiced within it, its defenses, and such period entertainments as jousts and feasts--even such lurid aspects of the times as pressing, drawing and quartering, bearbaiting, and cockfighting receive the same graphic attention to detail. The duo's trademark humor is evident throughout, and this time they incorporate a "Where's Waldo?" type of game: a spy steals into the castle and can be detected (by keen-eyed readers) sneaking about the premises before making his escape. Not only is the book guaranteed to attract browsers, but it will also make fun and fruitful work of report research.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781564584670
  • Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc.
  • Publication date: 9/15/1994
  • Series: Stephen Biesty Ser.
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 32
  • Age range: 9 - 12 Years
  • Product dimensions: 10.89 (w) x 14.13 (h) x 0.37 (d)

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Sort by: Showing 1 Customer Review

  • Posted December 21, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    Tons of stuff to see- good eyes required!

    This book gives you a good feel for castle construction and the activities carried out in day-to-day living. There are several non-annotated color plates showing the multiple stages of a seige, but most pages are packed full of cutaway drawings with descriptive notes. The pictures are highly detailed, but the most of the illustrations are small due to the scale of the image.

    Many interesting items of trivia not commonly known are covered in this book. For example- a blob of beeswax was placed on the tip of a crossbow quarrel to aid in penetrating armor, and the unfortunate person who cleaned out the latrine was called a "gong farmer".

    Some disturbing aspects of castle living are covered, e.g. torture, execution, bloodletting- but the small size of the pictures helps minimize the impact of the gruesome content.

    Overall it's a very entertaining and informative book that will require multiple readings in order to find all the details.

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