James Rumford

Shows how important learning is in a country where only a few children are able to go to school.

Rain School

A Story of Baghdad

Silent Music

The award-winning author of Silent Music presents a sumptuously illustrated account of how printed books came into existence, describing how the world's first books were made by hand and how Johannes Gutenberg invented a way to print books with moveable type.

How Gutenberg Changed the World

From the Good Mountain

Ibn Battuta was the traveler of his age—the fourteenth century, a time before Columbus when many believed the world to be flat. Like Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta left behind an account of his own incredible journey from Morocco to China, from the steppes of Russia to the shores of Tanzania, some seventy-five thousand miles in all. James Rumford has retold Ibn Battuta’s story in words and pictures, adding the element of ancient Arab maps—maps as colorful and as evocative as a Persian miniature, as intricate and mysterious as a tiled Moroccan wall. Into this arabesque of pictures and maps, James Rumford has woven the story not just of a traveler in a world long gone but of a man on his journey through life.

The Journey of Ibn Battuta 1325-1354

Traveling Man

موسيقى الحروف

The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing (Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Honor (Awards))

Sequoyah

After seeing a wounded creature on the beach, an animal like no one, Manu decides to nurse it back to health and becomes its valuable friend, one that will later return the favor during dangerous times, in a tale about the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands.

Illustrations and Story in English & Hawaiian

Dog-of-the-Sea-Waves

A biography of the French scholar whose decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic language made the study of ancient Egypt possible.

The Man who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Seeker of Knowledge

In 1802, Jean-Francois Champollion was eleven years old. That year, he vowed to be the first person to read Egypt’s ancient hieroglyphs. Champollion’s dream was to sail up the Nile in Egypt and uncover the secrets of the past, and he dedicated the next twenty years to the challenge. James Rumford introduces the remarkable man who deciphered the ancient Egyptian script and fulfilled a lifelong dream in the process. Stunning watercolors bring Champollion’s adventure to life in a story that challenges the mind and touches the heart.

The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs

A sheriff in the Old West fights crime with the help of his lucky ten-gallon hat.

Don't Touch My Hat!

What was made of rags and bones, soot and seeds? What took a mountain to make? For the answer, travel back to the fifteenth century—to a time when books were made by hand and a man named Johannes Gutenberg invented a way to print books with movable type. Written as a series of riddles and illustrated in the style of medieval manuscripts by an award-winning author and artist, From the Good Mountain will intrigue readers of all ages. On every page there is something surprising to learn about how the very thing you are holding in your hands came to be.

A Chinese grandfather and his grandson who are captured by the Arab army barter for their freedom by demonstrating the art of papermaking.

The Cloudmakers

A simplified and illustrated retelling of the exploits of the Anglo-Saxon warrior, Beowulf, and how he came to defeat the monster Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a dragon that threatened the kingdom.

Beowulf, a Hero's Tale Retold

When a tiger and a turtle both want a flower that has fallen to the ground, they argue over it until a fight breaks out between them.

Tiger and Turtle

The story of Sequoyah is the tale of an ordinary man with an extraordinary idea—to create a writing system for the Cherokee Indians and turn his people into a nation of readers and writers. The task he set for himself was daunting. Sequoyah knew no English and had no idea how to capture speech on paper. But slowly and painstakingly, ignoring the hoots and jibes of his neighbors and friends, he worked out a system that surprised the Cherokee Nation—and the world of the 1820s—with its beauty and simplicity. James Rumford’s Sequoyah is a poem to celebrate literacy, a song of a people’s struggle to stand tall and proud.

James Rumford

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