What do you think?
Rate this book
Best in Children's Books Volume 8
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 30, 2024
"Gulliver in Lilliput" is a much-abridged version of the Jonathan Swift original, illustrated by Lawrence Beall Smith. Kids love the idea of being a giant in a land of Lilliputians, but I sometimes wonder what Swift would think of his multi-nation epic being reduced to this one small part.
"The House That Jack Built" is the Mother Goose Rhyme with simple illustrations by Leonard Weisgard, some of which seem to me a waste of colored pages.
"Giddy-ap, Giddy-ap!" is about a boy who loved cowboys and has a strong 1950s vibe. I liked it.
Charles Perrault's "Cinderella" is illustrated by Susanne Suba. I have always liked Perrault's telling of the tale but these sketchy illos are my least favorite of all I have seen.
"Everybody Lends Jerry Muskrat a Hand" is an excerpt from Thornton Burgess' massive Old Mother West Wind series. The Old Mother West Wind stories inhabit a world somewhere between pure fable and semi-accurate nature tales; this one tends more in the fable direction. The colorful illustrations by Herman B. Vestal add to the over-all effect.
"The Story Book of Wheels" by Maud and Miska Pettersham is a children's history on a branch of scientific development. It embraces a definition of "Wheel" that seems over-broad to me, embracing everything from the rollers predating the modern wheel to gears and windmill sails. Some of the art is based on ancient illustrations and is intriguingly stylized.
I have my doubts about some of the childhood stories in "Napoleon, the Corsican Boy," which have a "Washington and the Cherry Tree" flavor to me, but Napoleon was such a character they might've originated with him rather than being creations of some author. Or they could be true, for all I know; certainly most of it is. The story, by Smith Burnham, does buy into the idea that Napoleon was short, which is now disputed. Richard Moss' illustrations are not particularly enhanced by being given a two-color treatment but work fine otherwise.
"Fishes of the Shallow Sea" is brief paragraphs on various colorful tropical sea life, which I suppose are all technically "fish" but range from triggerfish to skates to morays to sea horses. The text is straightforward and it is illustrated with photographs.
"Dick and the Canal Boat" by Sanford Tousry is a light adventure tale that serves as nice overview of the Erie Canal, covering everything from "Clinton's Ditch" to the five-stairstep locks at Lockport. The illustrations by Edward Shenton are nicely detailed and I think this is one of the more satisfactory offerings of its type in this series. Informative, and a nice tale on its own.
https://www.albany.com/history/erie-c...
https://www.eriecanal.org/Lockport-1....
"Let's Visit France" is the usual offering of one page of text, a two-page map with sketches to find, and one page of photos. I am familiar with Rodin's work -- he's probably best known in the US for "The Thinker" or "The Kiss" -- but did not recognize the "Rodin memorial" on the map; it is "The Burghers of Calais."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bur...
"The House That Jack Built" is the Mother Goose Rhyme with simple illustrations by Leonard Weisgard, some of which seem to me a waste of colored pages.
"Giddy-ap, Giddy-ap!" is about a boy who loved cowboys and has a strong 1950s vibe. I liked it.
Charles Perrault's "Cinderella" is illustrated by Susanne Suba. I have always liked Perrault's telling of the tale but these sketchy illos are my least favorite of all I have seen.
"Everybody Lends Jerry Muskrat a Hand" is an excerpt from Thornton Burgess' massive Old Mother West Wind series. The Old Mother West Wind stories inhabit a world somewhere between pure fable and semi-accurate nature tales; this one tends more in the fable direction. The colorful illustrations by Herman B. Vestal add to the over-all effect.
"The Story Book of Wheels" by Maud and Miska Pettersham is a children's history on a branch of scientific development. It embraces a definition of "Wheel" that seems over-broad to me, embracing everything from the rollers predating the modern wheel to gears and windmill sails. Some of the art is based on ancient illustrations and is intriguingly stylized.
I have my doubts about some of the childhood stories in "Napoleon, the Corsican Boy," which have a "Washington and the Cherry Tree" flavor to me, but Napoleon was such a character they might've originated with him rather than being creations of some author. Or they could be true, for all I know; certainly most of it is. The story, by Smith Burnham, does buy into the idea that Napoleon was short, which is now disputed. Richard Moss' illustrations are not particularly enhanced by being given a two-color treatment but work fine otherwise.
"Fishes of the Shallow Sea" is brief paragraphs on various colorful tropical sea life, which I suppose are all technically "fish" but range from triggerfish to skates to morays to sea horses. The text is straightforward and it is illustrated with photographs.
"Dick and the Canal Boat" by Sanford Tousry is a light adventure tale that serves as nice overview of the Erie Canal, covering everything from "Clinton's Ditch" to the five-stairstep locks at Lockport. The illustrations by Edward Shenton are nicely detailed and I think this is one of the more satisfactory offerings of its type in this series. Informative, and a nice tale on its own.
https://www.albany.com/history/erie-c...
https://www.eriecanal.org/Lockport-1....
"Let's Visit France" is the usual offering of one page of text, a two-page map with sketches to find, and one page of photos. I am familiar with Rodin's work -- he's probably best known in the US for "The Thinker" or "The Kiss" -- but did not recognize the "Rodin memorial" on the map; it is "The Burghers of Calais."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bur...
Displaying 1 of 1 review