Patterns in Peru: An Adventure in Patterning

Oh man. This kinda hit all my buttons. I am a YUUUGEE fan of several things:
- Incan civilization
- Especially Incan weaving and textile geniusness
- Especially quipu, aka a possibly completely independently-developed and interesting form of writing, I AM DYING OF EXCITEMENT HERE PEOPLE
- Especially people figuring things out, related to the above

So this is about 2 twin kids - a boy and a girl - accompanying their “scientist” parents (anthropologists? I dunno) to Peru, where they're working with a local professor on deciphering some quipu, I guess. (It's actually unclear what the parents are working on. Textile geniusness, of some kind.)

The kids grab some like super ancient and probably not to be taken out of the controlled-atmosphere museum piece of textile, and decide to go on a bit of an Indiana Jones-esque adventure throughout the Peruvian highlands. They come upon a very Indiana Jones “lost city” indeed (this was less amusing to me, since we were edging close to those old school portrayals of South American “lost civilizations”). I - AN ADULT - learned about an entirely new animal to me, the guanaco (a llama relative).

Anyway. This was maybe the most light touch of my Math For Kids reading crusade; it's mostly about patterns. I do love it. I LOVED it. I might buy this one. Now if only they made something mathy and anthropologistical and light-touch about my beloved Renaissance Italy... sigh, one can only dream...