LITTLE PEOPLE AND A LOST WORLD
By Linda Goldenberg
Twenty-First Century Books, 2006
Category: Middle grade non-fiction
I have a folder in my closet labeled “IDEAS”. This is where I tuck interesting newspaper articles and scraps of paper on which I have jotted random thoughts that might someday make a start for an article, book, or story. I find I don’t give my Idea folder the attention it is due, though, because I am too busy turning other ideas into articles, books or stories. I am a writer who is blessed (cursed?) with more ideas than time to bring them to the page.
This morning, though, I paid a visit to the Idea folder. I was looking for an article I vaguely remember clipping, an article about the discovery of a skeleton in Indonesia that scientists believed could represent a new and tiny human species. I found it under a slip of paper that says “I didn’t fumble it! I just dropped it by accident!” (words I overheard my daughter scream at her brothers while they were teaching her to play football). Sure enough, “Ancient Dwarf Found” is a 2004 article that reports the very story that Linda Goldenberg has turned into a new book for middle grade readers. I knew this idea had potential!
LITTLE PEOPLE AND A LOST WORLD is an adventure in anthropology. Goldenberg takes readers to Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia. In September 2003, Australian and Indonesian scientists unearthed the skeletal remains of a human with an unusually small stature. By telling the story in real time–from the skeleton’s discovery, to its identification as a thirty year old woman who stood only three feet tall, to studies that indicate the woman, and others like her, possessed both high intelligence and a small brain (a rare combination in human evolutionary history), to the dramatic scientific battle over her bones—Goldenberg creates one of my favorite kinds of books: a scientific mystery. LITTLE PEOPLE AND A LOST WORLD pulls readers into the world of modern scientific discovery, shows them the passion as well as the warts, and leaves them pondering our very existence. Well done, Linda Goldenberg!
LITTLE PEOPLE AND A LOST WORLD has been nominated for a 2007 CYBIL award. You can check out the other nominees in the Middle Grade & YA Nonfiction category here.