From the award-winning author of The Way Things Work, a remarkable look at how a sixteenth-century mosque would have been built, in words and pictures.

“Gorgeously illustrated . . . Macaulay is renowned for spectacular children’s books with an architectural flavor . . . Mosque is a superbly illustrated and technically engrossing explanation of how a great Turkish mosque complex would be built in about 1600 . . . Frankly, I had no idea that I was interested in how mosques were put together, but I found the subject fascinating. And I learned how to make a brick and build a dome, and also a good deal about the economics of the Ottoman Empire and the role of the mosque in society. Macaulay’s mosque is fictional, but loosely based on those built around Istanbul (then Constantinople) in the late 16th century by Sinan, a great architect of the Ottoman Empire.” —The New York Times

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The author reveals the methods and materials used to design and construct a mosque in late-16th-century Turkey. Through the fictional story and illustrations, readers will learn how such monumental structures were built and how they functioned in society.

This book is another Macaulay great this time chronicling 1580's mosque creation in the Ottoman Empire. The story uses a narrator to raise and address various engineering problems and both traditional and innovative solutions of the time. There is an emphasis on the prestige and political and economic motivations for the construction in addition to the religious and technical. The illustration is profound and gorgeous and gives a great sense of the mastery of geometry and space true to the skills of the historical artisans and architects who might have worked on such a place of worship, which speaks well of Macaulay’s research into the era and really cultivates an admiration for the genius of the people involved. ( )

I would use this book in grades 4th-7th grade because the book is at a higher reading level than what K-3 can read. I would use it as an independent read for students who want to know more about Islam religion.