________________ CM . . . . Volume XXIII Number 14 . . . . December 9, 2016

cover

My Car Can Take Me Far.

Laura Escalante. Illustrated by Anthony Berardo.
Oakville, ON: Rock's Mills Press, 2013.
21 pp., stapled pbk., $9.95.
ISBN 978-1-77244-005-8.

Preschool-kindergarten / Ages 3-5.

Review by Ellen Heaney.

* /4

   

This little book has been published by Rock's Mills Press, an independent Ontario publisher with a self-described mission to publish "books that matter", many of these being adult non-fiction on Canadian historical subjects.

internal art     My Car Can Take Me Far has the feel of a self-published work. It is a small, square paperback featuring the same two characters (mother and son?) travelling to a variety of places in a little blue car and eventually ending up back in their garage where they express that old sentiment that getting around is nice, but home is, after all, best.

      The illustrations are bright computer-generated art, with foreground figures decisively outlined in black and slightly more fuzzy backdrops showing city streets, freeways, fields and mountains. The human faces are simplified (eyes and mouths only – no noses) with unwaveringly cheerful expressions.

      Each scene is described in two lines of doggerel verse, some of which scans and rhymes and some of which does not. For example:

Then my car takes me to my play group
Before hurrying on to my sister's dance troupe.

      Or:

Into a new country across the border,
Where we stop for snacks so the trip seems shorter!

      My Car Can Take Me Far is Escalante's second book and animation artist Berardo's first.

      Libraries and schools can do much better with their budgets – even though no price is actually indicated on the book.

Not Recommended.

Ellen Heaney is a retired children's librarian living in Coquitlam, BC.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364
Hosted by the University of Manitoba.
 

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