Deucedly clever paper engineering allows young visitors to spin the London Eye, raise Tower Bridge for a ship’s passage and more in this spit-spot tour along the Thames.
Two landmarks (the aforementioned Eye and the building aptly dubbed “The Gherkin”) require manually folded tabs to stay upright, but no other assembly is required. With infectious enthusiasm, Maizels squires viewers from Kew Gardens to Olympic Park—pausing along the way to toss out famous names, physical and historical facts, ghost stories and “find-this” challenges. Opening each of the five spreads raises a grand array of selected structures crowded along the winding river’s banks. These are depicted in fine but clear detail and, mostly, printed on both sides so that turning the display around affords glimpses of interiors as well as additional boxed factlets. Glued flaps on every spread lift to reveal introductory comments and one-sentence introductions to famous Londoners of (mostly) the past, while small images of taxis, corgis, Trafalgar Square pigeons and Union Jacks add dashes of local color.
A grand panorama, though because the geography is, to say the least, creative and the stately buildings are barely even a representative sampling of what London has to offer, this is more a keepsake than a tourist’s guide. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 6-10)
