HOW'S IT MADE?

The seven factories toured in Lewis' seven photo-sequences are engaged in making bicycles, flashlights, umbrellas, skipping ropes, mint candies, rocking chairs, and footballs respectively. To each, he allots a full double-page with a cut-off haft-page inserted between--Paddy Pork-style. Perhaps this middle page is shortened to allow a glimpse of the final full-page photo of the finished product in use--an option that many viewers are likely to resort to, as it's often difficult to tell from the earlier, more crowded groupings of captionless pictures just what is being made. (As it is, some of the processes might remain unclear to the mechanically unsophisticated, and sometimes it's even hard to figure out the sequence in which they are to be viewed.) With neither the procedural detail that a few words or clearer pictures might provide, nor the eye-opening instant impact of Lewis' Zoo City (1976), this might appeal to the clock-dismantling type of child who has the persistence--and the confidence--to see it through.