Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert was only twenty three when he ventured into Mohawk territory in search of the answers to some pressing questions: where were all the beaver skins that the Indians should have been shipping down the river? Was the money that should have been going into the pockets of the Dutch going to the French instead? Despite freezing temperatures and a scarcity of trustworthy guides, maps, and sometimes even food, Harmen van den Bogaert and his friends set off for a journey through old New York in an attempt to revive the struggling fur trade. Nearly four centuries later, George O'Connor brings Harmen van den Bogaert's journal of his travels to life with simple and striking artwork. O'Connor, writer and illustrator of the entertaining children's book Kapow! puts pictures to the actual diary entries of Dutch trader Van den Bogaert, who set off through New York's Indian territory in 1634, searching for a source of valuable beaver pelts. More than simply illustrating the account, O'Connor fills it with a new life--expanding on ideas only touched upon, creating action and conflict, and casting some welcome humor into the Dutchman's somewhat dry original commentary. While not exactly fast paced, the odyssey is filled with unusual details and insights about the Native Americans--the frequency of bear meat in their diet, their practice of treating certain illness by vomiting on the patient, their attitudes toward the foreigners. O'Connor himself seems well versed on the subject, and his pictures conjure an authentic sense of a sparse and demanding landscape as they offer a glimpse into a lost culture. The diary is absent of racism, but there is a single frame of nudity and a bloodless depiction of a scalping. Jesse Karp Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “First Second goes to Mohawk Country - By Kate Culkin First Second, Henry Holt/Roaring Brook's graphic novel imprint, continues to push the boundaries of graphic literature with George O'Connor's Journey into Mohawk Country, a book-length comics adaptation of a 16th-century Dutch trader's diary. Journey will debut in September with an initial print run of about 15,000 copies, and First Second editorial director Mark Siegel sees it as a groundbreaking effort that will earn praise as an unusual comics work and as a work of history. "It is an important historical journal, with wonderful art by O'Connor," he says. Journey tells the story of Harmen Meyndertsz von den Bogaert, who in 1634 traveled from Fort Orange (present-day Albany) with two companions deep into Mohawk Indian territory to forge a new trade agreement for beaver pelts on behalf of the Dutch West India Company. Their efforts helped ensure the survival of New Netherlands, which included what is now Manhattan, thus shaping the history of New York City and North America. In an interview with PWCW, debut graphic novel artist O'Connor explains that he learned of von den Bogaert while reading Russell Shorto's Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (Vintage). He then sought out William Staarna and Charles Gehring's translation of the journal. His subsequent research included sketching hundreds of artifacts in museums: "Basically, anyplace that had some time-appropriate collections of Iroquois artifacts, I dropped by." "Doing Journey into Mohawk Country was like scratching an itch I didn't know I had," says O'Connor, author of the popular children's books Kapow!, Kersplash (both S&S Children's) and Sally and the Some-thing (Roaring Brook). The final product represents a impressive collaboration among O'Connor, Siegel and colorist Hilary Sycamore. O'Connor's first draft presented realistic but dry renderings of the journal's events. Siegel encouraged the artist to portray the emotion and humor of the Dutchman's experience, while keeping his words intact. O'Connor believes he ultimately grasped the "soul of the story," which is "the tale of these three young men sent into the wilderness of North America, with really no preparation or support to speak of, and how the experience transformed them." Sycamore's rich palette of browns, yellows, and purples is critical to the book's emotional resonance, and O'Connor praises her talent and her patience: "She would endure these long conversations with me, filled with many pointless diversions and trivia I had picked up, as I explained what I hoped she could accomplish with the color, and she would come back with something even better than I had envisioned." "O'Connor," says Siegel, "is a very good self-promoter. He used to work at [Manhattan children's bookstore] Books of Wonder, and knows a lot of people and a lot of places." The author will tour Hudson Valley bookstores in the fall. First Second featured the book prominently in its displays at the MoCCA Art Festival, San Diego Comic-Con and American Library Association, and will feature it at