W IS FOR WINNIPEG

Bridgman’s fanciful painted depiction of Winnipeg, Manitoba’s landmarks introduces young readers to the many architectural wonders in the Canadian city.

Using the framework of owls flying over the city and noticing various buildings and structures, this alphabet book assigns a Winnipeg landmark to each letter. The alphabet pages feature spare text, highlighting the featured letter each time it appears. Paired letters spread rhymes across subsequent pages: “C is for Children’s Museum, a place for all. / D is for Dominion Bank—those columns are tall.” Detailed discussions of each landmark fill the later pages, written to be engaging for independent young readers interested in the details of each location. While the landmarks may be very familiar to Winnipeg residents, readers from other locations could not be blamed for wondering how so many marvels fit into one city. The Flying Saucer—a circular, elevated apartment building—is illustrated as flying above the city on a floating island. The Royal Canadian Mint, though it matches the shape of the actual building, is made to appear like a glowing mountain with a sun behind it (a snowscape occupies the foreground). Thunderbird House is depicted as sitting on rainbow tiles; the Exchange District has a dragon curled around one of its buildings. These whimsical touches make for captivating images that locals will surely appreciate, but they may confuse nonresidents. Luckily, the highly detailed descriptions in the back half of the book provide real context for each building and showcase the many different types of structures included, including government institutions, housing, museums, bridges, and more. While Bridgman sometimes stretches for her rhymes with convoluted sentence structures (“stories and stars here do meet”), overall, each page is accessible for young lap readers; the end pages, and Bridgman’s beautiful art (each page features a hidden, or not so hidden, owl), extend the book’s appeal to a middle-grade audience, who could use the text for school reports.

A lovely, whimsical celebration of Winnipeg’s varied architecture.