12 Days of New York

PreS-Gr 1—Five students and their teacher arrive in The Big Apple to see the sights. From the Statue of Liberty, through Coney Island, the American Museum of Natural History, and ending at the South Street Seaport, the children get caught up in the vibe of the city. Bolden uses "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as a model for her text, which seems an odd choice, and the locales that the visitors choose (named only in the back matter) are odder still. A helpful map that orients viewers is appended. While some of the sights are iconic (the Empire State Building, for example), many of the others are not and children will be hard-pressed to identify what they are seeing. Even the vibrant illustrations are of no help in that regard. For example, the spread of Grand Central Station bears no sign identifying it as such, and the text cites "eight babes-a-bawling." Indeed, there are eight babies crying in the art but what they have to do with Grand Central Station is puzzling. Bolden does succeed in capturing the feel of the city, but the information is too spare for children to learn much from it. Stronger books that will give a greater sense of New York include Laura Krauss Melmed's New York, New York! From A to Z (HarperCollins, 2005) and Roxie Munro's The Inside-Outside Book of New York City (Putnam, 1985).—Joan Kindig, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA