First to the Top: Sir Edmund Hillary's Amazing Everest Adventure

Gr 2–4—This enjoyable picture book biography of famed mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary crafts a vibrant picture of Hillary and offers just enough information for a biography report. While the primary focus is on the inaugural climb of Mount Everest, this New Zealander's whole life is explored. The conversational style of the text in this import includes some vocabulary from New Zealand that may be unfamiliar to American children but whose meaning is easily gleaned from context. The font is effectively enlarged to emphasize the danger of scaling Everest. Morris's evocative drawings ably convey the incredible effort it took to achieve the historic task. Subtle details will attract readers, such as when Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are walking in a garden but their shadows show them in their climbing gear. The whirl of the wind atop the mountain on a freezing night is dramatically rendered to enhance the description of solitude and peril of their undertaking. The book avoids the controversy over whether Hillary or Norgay was actually first atop Everest, instead making it a shared victory. The readable text and Morris's expressive illustrations combine to create a winner.