WHAT'S IN A MAP?

Cartwright's opening suggestions for making a ""feeling map"" of your bed, and then your room, sink and play group, by groping about with your eyes closed, could be as distracting as they are meant to be orienting--and this takes up half of the book. Then, detouring to note that a paper picture of a tree, for example, is ""very different"" from a real tree, she suggests making a paper map of ""your"" street, classroom, or ""the way to school""--but doesn't mention how--and adds (with no more elaboration) that you can make a ""block map"" of your house, classroom, or street or, at the beach, a ""sand map"" with roads and houses and hills. But the concepts that need clarification--scale, or simple correspondence, for example--are never broached, and what Cartwright does say is mostly self-evident and otherwise befuddling.