Leif the Lucky
Originally published in 1941, Leif the Lucky is a beautifully-illustrated and engaging look at the Norse explorer.
A thousand years ago when the Vikings roamed the seas, there lived a man in Norway called Erik the Red. He was able and strong but his temper was wild, and after a fight the elders banned him from Norway.
So he sailed to Iceland. There he built a farm, found a wife, and lived in peace for a while. But then he began to quarrel and fight again, and it wasn’t long before he had to flee from Iceland, too.
Now Erik sailed off into the unknown sea toward the setting sun, and there behind a wall of ice he found a new land… Erik the Red had three sons. The one was called Torstein, the second Torvald, and the third was called Leif.
This is the story of Leif, Erik’s son, who sailed with his father to Greenland, and who later sailed still farther west and found there the continent of America.
- About the authors: Ingri d’Aulaire and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire were American writers and illustrators of children’s books who worked primarily as a team, completing almost all of their well-known works together. The couple immigrated to the United States from Europe and worked on books that focused on history such as Abraham Lincoln, which won the 1940 Caldecott Medal.
