You've already met Christina and myself, and learned all about how This is Captain Cook came into existence. Now it's time to open the front cover and take a peek inside!
Okay, everyone sitting on their bottoms. Let's get started.
When we open a hard cover book, of course, the first thing we come to is one of my favourite things--the endpapers! I love endpapers!
Here are the endpapers for This is Captain Cook, gorgeously created by Christina. You can read about Christina's inspiration for the endpapers right here.
We then come to the very first pages--and here you will learn all about Miss Batts and her class. They are about to put on a school play about the life and times of Captain Cook (Elizabeth Batts was the name of Cook's real life wife!).
As the book progresses, you'll see the Captain voyaging to New Zealand (actually, he had only just been named a Captain by this stage--an honour bestowed upon him ahead of his first world voyage). On this voyage, he was tasked with a top secret mission (you must read the book to find out what it was!) and on the way to fulfill this mission, he bumped into two islands--New Zealand!
Soon after that, he discovered another, much larger land. I wonder if you can guess what it was??? When he had explored the entire coastline to the very top, he decided he'd had enough adventures for now. He had fulfilled his secret mission and so sailed home to England.
Captain Cook made two more world voyages after this first one. The second was to cross the Arctic Circle (kyboshed by a wall of ice) and the second to explore Canada, Alaska, his beloved Tahiti, and Hawaii.
Alas, this was his final voyage.
At the back of This is Captain Cook, readers are treated to a sensational peek at 'Cook's Gallery'--a line-up of beautiful images from the National Library catalogue. Included in this section is a peek at Cook's own Endeavour journal from April 1769.
Did you enjoy this peek at This is Captain Cook? We hope so! Watch for some draft images done by Christina when the book first began production--revealed a little later today.
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