The Warlord's Puzzle

by Virginia Pilegard, Nicolas Debon (Illustrator)

Overview

A young peasant boy convinces his poor but wise father to enter a contest to solve the warlord's puzzle, which is actually the original tangram. Recommended by the Califorina Department of Education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565544956
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	02/29/2000
Series:	Warlord's Series
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	326,943
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD800L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Virginia Walton Pilegard wrote The Warlord's Puzzle as part of a teaching unit that uses informal geometry to strengthen students' visual learning abilities. Mrs. Pilegard studied elementary mathematics and completed both a B.A. and M.A. in Education. She then went on to teach elementary grades and in juvenile correction schools.


Nicolas Debon is a freelance illustrator in Versailles, France. In addition to his illustrations for the Warlordís Series , he is also the author/illustrator of several other books, including two Canadian Governor Generalís Literary Award finalists.

Editorial Reviews

This tale of the origin of the Chinese tangram grew out of Pilegard's thesis project for her M.A. in education. When an artist bestows his gift of a blue tile on a warlord, he drops it, breaking it into seven pieces ("a parallelogram, a square, and five triangles"). As the warlord prepares to mete out "my worst punishment," the artist postpones his fate by suggesting a contest. The warlord proclaims that whoever puts the tile back together will receive a treasure and come to live in the palace. People eager to try their skill soon line the road to the palace gate; where wise men fail, a poor peasant's son quietly completes the puzzle. Pilegard punctuates her prose with colorful description (e.g., the tile is "the rare blue of a winter sky when dark storm clouds part"), but the boy's solution is anticlimactic, requiring little deductive reasoning ("He put the two large triangles together. They looked like his father's hat"). The strength of Debon's (The Moon Festival) paintings lies in the details of clothing, landscape and architecture. Unfortunately, his characterizations rely on stereotype: the tile artist comes off as a stooge, a monk as a smiley-faced goon. Though the appeal is primarily for adults, young puzzlers may enjoy the traceable tangram pattern at book's end--but likely won't be back for repeated readings. Ages 4-8. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

K-Gr 4-An artist presents an autocratic warlord with a beautiful blue tile, but when he accidentally drops it, it breaks into seven geometrical pieces. Terrified by cruel threats of punishment, he cannot arrange the pieces back into a square to mend them. The warlord then holds a contest, promising a reward to anyone who solves the puzzle. Crowds assemble, but no one, including a self-important scholar and an inscrutable monk, can reassemble the pieces. A poor fisherman's little boy at last solves the puzzle as he quietly plays with the shapes. No source is given for the incident, mentioned in the author's note, that inspired this tale about the origin of the tangram, believed to date back to the T'ang Dynasty (618-906). The illustrations reinforce the text's whimsical tone, presenting the characters as aliens in an operetta, striking static, exaggerated poses against plain backdrops, their faces contorted into melodramatic expressions of rage, fear, serenity, relief, and joy. Ann Tompert's Grandfather Tang's Story (Crown, 1990) uses characters that seem a bit more human to introduce tangrams in storytelling. The newer title's weaknesses-an improbable story, peopled with caricatures that speak in clich d dialogue-undermine whatever contributions it might make toward teaching geometry.-Margaret A. Chang, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

School Library Journal

A Chinese warlord receives a ceramic tile as a gift and promptly sentences the artist who made it to death when the title is shattered into seven pieces. The desperate artist proposes that a contest be held. Whoever is clever enough to put the tile fragments back together will be asked to live in the warlord's palace -- and his own life would be spared. After an enormous multitude of people fail at the task, a little peasant boy figures out a novel and unexpected solution. Virginia Pilegard's The Warlord's Puzzle is a delightful, highly recommended picturebook story that is gorgeously illustrated with the full color, museum quality artwork of Nicholas Debon.
—Childrens Book Watch

Childrens Book Watch