Fourteen-year-old Hendrik is a messenger boy for the East India trading company. He longs to travel to the far reaches of the earth as a captain’s artist, sketching exotic creatures that no other person has set eyes on. One day he delivers a mysterious parcel to the draper Mynheer Leeuwenhoek, a cloth merchant in the city of Delft in Holland.
“Ah, the whale’s eye!” exclaims Mynheer Leeuwenhoek. “I’ve been looking forward to dissecting—” He suddenly spies a drawing that has fallen from Hendrik’s pocket and examines it with great interest. “You’re an artist. You’re just the person I need,” he says.
Hendrik finds himself inside Mynheer Leeuwenhoek’s shop, peering at a louse through a magnifying glass. As he examines the monster with its coat of armor and frightening pincers, his fingers itch to sketch it. Mynheer Leeuwenhoek says he has collected a new specimen that he is eager to examine and that he and his daughter, Maria, will expect Hendrik that evening.
grew long, and the sun glinted golden on the ripples of Oude Delft, Hendrik returned from his final delivery of the day. The smell of
