THE DAY THE LIFTING BRIDGE STUCK

Sooner or later, there had to be a contemporary children's book about gridlock, and here it is: brief bios of a representative sample of those caught in the jam; the bridgekeeper's struggles to get his malfunctioning bridge moving; an aerial view (the roads are decorative, but make a remarkably nonfunctional pattern; the cars are wider than the two-lane roads); then the bridge recovers (not much explanation here), and everybody gets going again. Cheery cartoon-style illustrations from a first-time illustrator, plenty of cars and boats to look at, and a modicum of insight into one modern fact of life.