Problematic for libraries due to the detachable token, but like Mary Javins’ 3-D World Atlas and Tour (2008), the gimmick...
A penguin guide conducts prospective tourists on a whirlwind flight over 28 world cities.
From Amsterdam to Washington, D.C., Li arranges her highly simplified aerial views in alphabetical order. Along with major streets and geographical features, she places on each a select assortment of thumbnail images of architectural highlights, plus comments on distinctive foods, festivals, sports, and other points of interest. Each proto-map also features a handful of arbitrary facts, from characteristic greetings (“Che!” for Buenos Aires, “Ahlan!” for Cairo, “Hey!” for Chicago) to the local language(s) and currency. If half of the chosen cities are in Europe or North America, the other continents (except Antarctica) are at least represented, and though her figures are stylized, the buildings are recognizable and the scattering of tiny humans diverse in dress and skin color. The flyover is sparse of detail and occasionally sloppy; Cairo and Mexico City are misplaced on the world map, for instance, and a head with a feathered bonnet labeled “Aboriginal Canadians” on the Toronto spread is at best an inadequate representation. Still, it provides young armchair travelers with tantalizing notions of each city’s treasures and character as well as a bit of map-reading practice. There is a small removable compass in the cover.
Problematic for libraries due to the detachable token, but like Mary Javins’ 3-D World Atlas and Tour (2008), the gimmick isn’t indispensable to the journey. (review quizzes) (Informational novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84365-274-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Pavilion/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
Vague text and anemic pictures make this at best a half-hearted tribute to the construction workers of the last century or so. In her brief, poetic text Johnson writes of “those shadowy building men . . . moving the earth to connect water,” of “railroad workers . . . who were there to connect all.” She continues: “As buildings tower above us / they tell the tales / of the cities . . . They whisper down past it all and say, / ‘They built us, your fathers . . .’ ” There is little here to engage child readers, either intellectually or emotionally, and Moser’s remote, indistinct portraits of ordinary-looking men (only men) dressed in sturdy working clothes and, mostly, at rest, only intermittently capture any sense of individual or collective effort. In evident recognition of these inadequacies, a prose afterword has been added to explain what the book is about—a superfluous feature had Moser and Johnson produced work up to their usual standards. Let readers spend time more profitably with the likes of John Henry or Mike Mulligan. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-590-66521-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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