In Samurai Rising, award-winning nonfiction author Pamela S. Turner (The Frog Scientist) takes on the heroic and tragic samurai Minamoto Yoshitsune. The playfully narrated story begins in 1160 in Kyoto, the night Yoshitsune's father was beheaded for kidnapping Japan's Retired Emperor... and the reader is hooked.
Yoshitsune, born in the middle of a bloody civil war between the Minamoto and Taira families, spent his life avenging his father's death. At 15, he ran away from a Buddhist temple to train as a samurai: "It was like a boy who had never played Little League showing up for spring training with the Yankees." Still, only six years later, he fled headlong into war. His daring decisions in the heat of battle quickly made him famous--plunging down a sheer mountainside on horseback to infiltrate enemy fortifications, or attacking ships from the backs of horses swimming in stormy seas. His fame spread, too, because unlike most samurai, Yoshitsune was loyal to a fault and kept a core group of friends around him. He also "probably had an ego the size of Mount Fuji."
Turner integrates the political rivalries, and daily life and rituals, of early samurai culture into the thrilling action sequences of Yoshitsune's life--along with information about weapons, armor, honorable death and the high cost of sibling rivalry. Extensive chapter notes provide fascinating insights into her principal sources, mainly translated primary accounts. A list of character names, maps and a hefty bibliography are vital additions as well, and Gareth Hinds (author of graphic retellings like The Odyssey and Beowulf) dramatically enhances the story with brush-and-ink drawings. --Angela Carstensen, school librarian, Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City