GO, GO AMERICA

Yaccarino sends readers whose ride aboard Peter Sís’s Train of States (2004) has only whetted an appetite for random facts, quirky laws and roadside attractions on a somewhat more leisurely car trip from Maine to Hawaii. Each state (plus Washington, D.C.) gets a page or spread strewn with snippets of eminently shareable trivia—from horse, camel, car, lizard or bathtub races to festivals highlighting the culinary delights of pickles, frog legs and roadkill. Places range from the hometowns of lawn flamingoes and miniature golf to places where it’s illegal to sleep in boots (Oklahoma) or tease a skunk (Minneapolis). Though Yaccarino provides visual links with small cartoon figures of a tourist family, plus frequent glimpses of Bigfoot, the art really takes a back seat to the multiple sizes, fonts and colors of the text. He doesn’t get all of his facts straight either—the nation’s first subway wasn’t in Boston, and it’s misleading to claim that Arkansas’s Crater of Diamonds State Park is “the only place in the world where people can keep the gems they find.” Still, browsers will find this hard to put down, and more systematic sorts will linger over the closing chart of state capitals, mottos and the like. (source list) (Nonfiction. 7-11)