Kalman (Swami on Rye, 1995, etc.) plays eccentric tour guide to the Big Apple’s Grand Central Station, just in time for the building’s big re-opening. Kalman introduces readers to passengers, conductors, light-bulb changers, and complaint takers, interviewing all the individuals that collectively make the big train station buzz: Minna Fuchsbaum says, “This lollipop is delicious”; Ethel Schloogle is headed for a hair cut; the Oblensky twins take tap-dance lessons at Carnegie Hall. Some of the tidbits are tantalizing (diagrams of the shapes of each conductor’s signature hole punch), others deliberately extraneous (paintings of Einstein, Pasternak, and the pyramids at Giza). If some of the eccentricities are strained, the paintings are vivacious as ever and truly capture the building’s grandeur and eclecticism, in everything from its lofty star-gilded ceiling to the scurry of individuals below, the lure of destinations known and new, and the greetings and farewells that are part of every trip. (Picture book. 5-9)
