Publishers Weekly – July 29, 2019

84 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019

Review_CHILDREN’S

Home, Sweet Home

Moira Butterfield, illus. by Clair Rossiter. Kane Miller, $12.99 (32p)

ISBN 978-1-61067-886-5

Hopscotching through a series of questions—“So what makes

a home a wonderful place?” “What does your roof look like?”

“Where do you like to munch your meals?”—Butterfield pres-

ents a disparate collection of home-related facts loosely organized

by location: roofs, front doors, walls, kitchens, dinner tables,

gardens, stairs, bathrooms, and bedrooms. Though this makes

room for a multitude of eclectic tidbits (“The town of Sibiu in

Romania is famous for having lots of roofs with eyes”), they

never cohere into much more than an accounting of facts.

Rossiter’s cheery illustrations are populated by a diversity of

smiling people around the world, living in architecturally varied

structures. As for what makes a house a home, “there is some-

thing that makes homes special.... It’s the people we love and

share our homes with!” Ages 3–7. (Sept.)

A Taste of the World: What People Eat and

How They Celebrate Around the Globe

Beth Walrond. Little Gestalten, $29.99 (80p) ISBN 978-3-89955-818-0

Walrond takes readers on a colorful tour of the world,

exploring flavor through favored foods and beloved festivals from

22 countries. Each section begins with a stylized map depicting

the countries covered, then introduces a key ingredient—spices

(Africa), rice (Asia and the Middle East), grains (Europe), and

chocolate (North and South America). The minimal Australasia

and Oceania section, though, features only

Australian bush tucker. Country-specific

explorations are paired with short intro-

ductions to local festivals and their signa-

ture tastes, including Día de los Muertos

in Mexico and Argungu in Nigeria.

Walrond’s stylish illustrations use bold

blocks of color to conjure the vivid flavors

of disparate cultures, pairing nicely with the text to offer an

enticing introduction to world cuisines. A guide on how to eat

using hands, chopsticks, or a knife and fork; a map of the world

with local foods; and a glossary conclude. Ages 6–up. (Aug.)

Overview, Young Explorer’s Edition:

A New Way of Seeing Earth

Benjamin Grant and Sandra Markle, illus. by Eugenie Fernandes.

Crown, $24.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-9848-3202-3

Invoking the spirit of Earthrise, astronaut Bill Anders’s

epoch-marking photo of Earth from space, Grant’s collection

of breathtaking satellite photos offers a mind-altering shift in

perspective adapted for young readers. Grouped by theme, the

first section, “An Amazing Earth,” focuses on the Earth’s

wonders, and the second, “An Amazing Earth and Us,” reveals

the dramatic impacts of human life on the planet. The crisp

photos mesmerize (the ferocious froth of Niagara Falls) and

sober (a patchwork marking relentless rainforest devastation

in Brazil). Concise captions explain each image, and reiterate

the idea of human responsibility: “With this new perspective

comes understanding. I believe that if we come together and

use this knowledge thoughtfully, we will create a better future

for our one and only home.” Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

This Is My World:

Meet 84 Kids from Around the Globe

Lonely Planet Kids. Lonely Planet Kids, $19.99 (176p) ISBN 978-1-

78701-295-0

Esther lives in Uganda and “want[s] to be a pilot.” In

Barbados, Arjun attends “a special school for children with

autism, like me.” Yousef, a Syrian living in a Jordanian refugee

camp, describes planting mint for tea. These are just a few

of the children aged seven to 12 “on six continents and more

than 70 countries” in Lonely Planet Kids’s offering, created

in partnership with War Child UK, a nonprofit supporting

children in conflict zones. In scrapbooklike spreads, children

describe their family, home, likes, and dislikes, mentioning

different facets of their experience—including autism and

using a wheelchair—and describing a variety of family

structures. Though LGBTQ representation is a notable

omission, the book largely succeeds in its mission to show

“how much children have in common.” Ages 6–8. (Sept.)

All of Us: A Young People’s History of the World

Christophe Ylla-Somers, illus. by Yvan Pommaux, trans. from the

French by Anna Lehmann. NYR Children’s Collection, $29.95 (88p)

ISBN 978-1-68137-321-8

The first nonfiction volume in the NYR Children’s Collection,

this ambitious panorama of human civilization covers the

origins of life to the end of the Cold War. The narration moves

across cultures and continents, marking developments keyed

to an advancing timeline; detailed illustrations and maps by

Pommaux augment the text. Readers may have conflicting

feelings about Ylla-Somers’s approach. The narrative frequently

uses an omniscient we and is often written from the perspective

of the oppressors (“We slaughtered lepers, vagrants, and Jews,

who were increasingly shunned”; “There was land to be

taken from the native people and cities to be built for future

generations of brave emigrants”), and in at least one place

removes fault from colonizing forces (“Chinese and Indian

civilizations also whetted the appetites of the colonizers”).

Though outmoded phrasing jars and the underlying perspective

is primarily Eurocentric, the book also depicts the wide-

ranging impacts of slavery, racism, colonialism, sexism, and

environmental depredation. Ages 8–11. (June)

Around the World in Five Books

Picture books explore people, places, history, and culture.