Who was Marco Polo?
It’s hard to imagine not knowing or being able to find out about the people, lands and cultures around the world. The Internet has made it possible to acquire extensive knowledge with the click of a mouse. And before the Internet, books, television and other media were readily available sources of information. In the not-too-distant past, however, people could only imagine what lay beyond the scope of their land. Enter Marco Polo, one of the greatest voyagers of all time (think Indiana Jones without the stuntmen), whose writings have influenced other travelers for centuries. At the time that Polo embarked on his sojourn, Western Europeans knew very little about the countries Polo visited. China in particular was a
Marco Polo lived 750 years ago. He traveled from Italy to China and saw sights that no European had seen before. He kept journals along the way and used them to write a travel book that would inspire Christopher Columbus. Some people say he exaggerated the things he saw. Join him for his journey in this book and you be the judge.
Marco Polo was seventeen when he set out for China . . . and forty-one when he came back! More than seven hundred years ago, Marco Polo traveled from the medieval city of Venice to the fabled kingdom of the great Kublai Khan, seeing new sights and riches that no Westerner had ever before witnessed. But did Marco Polo experience the things he wrote about . . . or was it all made-up? Young readers are presented with the facts in this entertaining, highly readable Who Was . . . ? biography with black-and-white artwork by John O’Brien.
