At Home in Her Tomb: Lady Dai and the Ancient Chinese Treasures of Mawangdui

It's just what I ordered and Expected. thank you

Very pleased with the condition.

This a very interesting understandable story for everyone.The illustrations alone are worth the price. Sue Pocock, Seattle, Wa.

I enjoyed reading the book with its rich sensory details about Lady Dai.

When I say the word “mummy” what springs into your mind? Movies starring Brendan Fraser? Egypt and scarabs and rolls of crumbling papyrus? Absolutely. But what if I told you that recently the best-preserved mummy in the world was found? And what if I told you that not only was she a woman, not only was she surrounded by treasure, but she was also Chinese. Now I’ve known about mummies in South America and frozen on mountains. I know about bog bodies and bodies that were dried out naturally in deserts. But I had no idea that there even was such a thing as a Chinese mummy. In "At Home in Her Tomb" author Christine Liu-Perkins breaks everything down for you, bringing us a story that’s part forensics, part history, part family story, and all interesting.Same old story. One minute you’re happily munching muskmelons. The next you’re dead and your corpse has been interred with miniature servants, silk paintings, scrolls, and countless other treasures. And the story might stop right there, except that in two thousand or so years nothing changes. Your body does not rot. Your treasures stay complete and unchanging. So when archaeologists excavated the tomb of Lady Dai, they can be forgiven for being completely astonished by what they found. In “At Home in Her Tomb” author Christine Liu-Perkins takes you not just into the mystery surrounding Lady Dai’s astonishingly well-preserved body, but also into ancient China itself. A more complete and exciting (and I use that word sparingly) glimpse into Qin and early Han Dynasties for children would be difficult to find.Why do we love mummies as much as we do? I think it might be a mix of different reasons. Maybe we’re so attached to our own bodies that we find a weird bit of hope in the fact that they might last beyond the usual prescribed amount of time allotted to an average dead carcass. My husband, I should note, hasn’t been completely thrilled with the fact that I leave this book lying about as much as I do. As he rightly points out, what we have here is a bloated corpse book. He’s not wrong and it’s not a particularly attractive dead body either. So why the fascination? Why should I care that her joints were still movable when they found her, or that her fingerprints and toe prints were clear? I can’t rightly say, but it’s a curiosity that kids share with adults. We want to know what happens beyond death. The next best thing, it seems, is to find out what happens to our bodies instead.There was a time when the television show "C.S.I." inspired whole waves of kids to dream of jobs in forensics. Naturally the real world applications are a lot less fast-paced and exciting than those on television. At least that’s what I thought before hearing about forensic anthropology. Author Liu-Perkins brings it to vivid, fascinating life. It’s not all that’s alluring about this title though since the layout of the book is rather clever as well. Rather than just stick with a single narrative of the discovery of the body and tomb, the author punctuates the text with little interstitial moments that talk about what everyday life for Lady Dai might have been like. Liu-Perkins allows herself a bit of creative freedom with these sections. Obviously we have no idea if Lady Dai “sigh[ed] in weariness” while tending her silkworms. To eschew accusations of mixing fact and fiction without so much as a by your leave, Liu-Perkins begins the book with an Introduction that sets the stage for the interstitial Lady Dai moments. She writes how the artifacts from the tomb caused her to imagine Lady Dai’s life. From there it seems as though the historical fiction sections are directly tied into this statement, clearly delineated in the text from the longer factual sections. Authors these days struggle with making the past live and breathe for their child readers without having to rely on gross speculation. This technique proves to be one answer to the conundrum.Admit it. A lot of booksellers and librarians are going to be able to hand sell this book to their customers and patrons by playing up the gross factor. Just show that shot on page 24 of the corpse of Lady Dai and a certain stripe of young reader is going to be instantaneously enthralled. Maybe they’ll take it home for closer examination. Maybe their eyes will then skim over to the text where phrases like “her eyeballs had begun falling out” lead to the factors that explain why the decay in the body stopped. They may then flip to the beginning and start reading front to finish, or they might skim from page to page. Honestly, there’s no wrong way to read a book of this sort. When you’re dealing with a title about the “best preserved body in the world” you’re already in pretty awesome territory. Credit then to Christine Liu-Perkins who gives the subject matter her full attention and presents it in such a way where many children will willingly learn about Chinese history in the process. A beautiful book. A heckuva mummy.For ages 9-12.

This book joins a growing group of titles about how archaeology and forensics inform our historical knowledge. Great for STEM classrooms and also for teachers who are trying to expand students’ interest in reading informational texts. In the early 70’s a tomb from the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) was discovered in Changsha, near the capital of Hunan Province in China. What’s fascinating here is the preservation was so well done that the cadaver inside still had flesh soft and moist to the touch. Scientists discovered 138 1/2 musk melon seeds in her digestive tract. The tomb – a time capsule of sorts – revealed objects, ideas, culture that we didn’t know were part of daily life in China that long ago – there were scrolls and books and miniature dolls of servants and musical instruments and food and more.Liu-Perkins is aware of her audience. She begins each chapter with a fictitious scene – what might have been occurring in Lady Dia’s life at a particular point – based on artifacts found in the tomb. The body of each chapter then addresses a different aspect of her life, the excavation and so forth. Clearly organized. The writing is cohesive and the content is not too dense. There are illustrations that clearly support the complex content – for example, the description of the burial chamber is supported by an illustration of the different compartments as well as detailed illustrations of the coffins that were nested within each other. Liu-Perkins weaves in historical notes about the time period and what was happening in the area. There is also a thread regarding the science behind how Lady Dai was entombed and why the tombs adjacent to hers were not as well preserved. In addition, she addresses the scientific knowledge and engineering that were part of that time period so long ago – as revealed in what we learned from artifacts found in the tomb.I make suggestions for how to book talk this title in grades 4-8 and also share how I would engage in close reading of an excerpt at my blog - http://sundaycummins.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/book-review-and-excerpt-for-close-reading-grades-4-8/

This well-researched book about a remarkable discovery - tombs in China, 150 years before the time of Christ, will astound readers. This piece of nonfiction about archaeologists who began excavating two ancient tooms in 1971, and made amazing discoveries - books made of bamboo, lacquer dishes, carved wooden servants, and the body of a woman so well preserved that her skin was still soft and pliable. A great choice for making history and research fascinating.

When I started reading this book, honestly, I was mostly interested in how Lady Dai’s body had been so well preserved, and I found the results of her autopsy really interesting. But I was thinking that would be the highlight of the book/the dig, at least for me. Then (right toward the end) Liu-Perkins starts talking about the books that were found in the son’s tomb...OMG. It was the Chinese equivalent of finding an intact trunk from the library of Alexandria. At Home in Her Tomb is a well written account of an amazing archaeological discovery, that I knew nothing about before I read it. If you’re interested in either archeology or Chinese history (or mummies, for that matter) I highly recommend it.