MONUMENTAL MAZES

Burnie taps the elegance of architectural cutaways and the stunning nature of enduring monuments to create 11 maze challenges. The pathway through a Manhattan skyscraper is a combination of girders and guard dogs; a warren of garden plots and rude gardeners try to thwart a traveler on China’s Great Wall; and construction scaffolding around the Sphinx provides an escape route for a slave. Among the other venues are the Eiffel Tower, a Roman arena, a Moghul temple, Florence Nightingale’s hospital, a flooded Venetian piazza, Christopher Columbus’s Spanish port, and an icy river blocking Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. The handsome and arresting line drawings are delicately tinted and richly atmospheric, filling each two-page spread completely. One problem is the pinch of the book’s binding interfering with the formal maze found in the Loire chateau; another is the difficulty in keeping track of the paths—while some onlookers wouldn’t dream of marking up so lovely a book, others will be tempted to make their journeys through the mazes permanent. Solutions are provided, as are brief descriptive passages of the locales. (Picture book. 7-11)