THE CITY

by Douglas--Illus. Florian ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 1982

There's nothing gleaming, throbbing, or mechanical about Florian's free-hand Manhattan--which is not the sightseer's center of expensive entertainment but the everyday resident's sidewalk surroundings. As you follow Florian's route from car-dotted bridge to subway to apartment interior, you can see a rack of dresses wheeled along the street, pizza dough tossed behind a storefront window near the laundromat, Chinese letters over a door next to Zilo's bakery, an ice-cream wagon parked in front of a touched-up Guggenheim Museum, smoke rising in blobby white balloons from chimneys and manholes, water towers and pigeons on rooftops, dogs on leashes, kids on skateboards, a kid with a catcher's mitt reaching for a baseball tossed from a fourth-floor window, lots of people walking (mostly solo), others looking out of windows, and, in this higgledy-piggledy context, the standard picture-book diversions: a construction site with a variety of trucks and workers in action, boats and baseball and bicycles in Central Park, a fire truck with a parade glimpsed behind it, around the corner, and then a piece of the parade in foreground. Watching, you'll see several scenes approached this way. The first time through, kids may or may not notice a figure with a red shopping bag making her way along the route--until, at the end, she enters her apartment and removes from the bag the city view first met at a sidewalk art show on the title page. The next time through, they'll notice more. Like Manhattan, it is not easily exhausted.

Pub Date: March 3, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: T. Y. Crowell

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1982

Categories: CHILDREN'S