Market Maze
Roxie Munro
 
Artist Munro is known to children for her Inside-Outside books and to adults for her New Yorker covers. For anyone who likes puzzles, she focuses here on a series of colorful mazes featuring fresh food and how it gets to market. Starting with fish from coastal waters, trucks pull away from a variety of farms producing fruit and vegetables, dairy products, eggs and flowers, even a tempting bakery. Each is a maze (seen from helicopter height), with clues to navigate and some hidden objects to search for (a chicken coop, a bull, a picnic table). Readers can follow the roads, tracking the produce trucks to a delivery station and a farmer’s market full of festive booths where kids can shop and decide what to buy. Keys are provided for each maze, while Munro includes detailed information on seasonal crops, local environments, and the value of choosing the freshest foods. Perfect for Sonoma County readers!                                                                        

2015, Ages 5 to 9

Check it out from your library using the library catalog. Donate to an improved Sebastopol Regional Library here.

Recommended by: Barbara Talcroft
Barbara Talcroft reviews children’s books professionally for childrenslit.com and for Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database.  She has a Master’s degree in International Children’s Literature.  She also has many years’ experience as a teacher.  Barbara is one of the founders of LANTERN and its past chairperson.

​Locomotive
Brian Floca
 
Picture books aren’t only for the very young. Floca’s Caldecott-winning story of a four-day trip west on the first Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines will resonate with Californians of all ages. Brightly painted steam locomotives carry a family in 1869 to the Sacramento terminal (passengers for San Francisco travel on by steamboat). Meet the crew--rugged engineer, sooty fireman, two brakemen, and the conductor. Roll with them across the Great Plains, climb the peaks of the Rockies and Sierras, cross a perilous wooden trestle; imitate the sounds. The star of this show, pictured from many unusual perspectives, is the locomotive itself in all its speed and power. Floca’s detailed paintings explore inside the train, too, showing passengers buying newspapers, playing cards, and desperately trying to sleep. Check the endpapers for a route map, cutaway views, even Union and Central Pacific timetables with fares of 1869. An exceptional gift for anyone who loves railroads or California history!                                                                                          

2013, Ages 8 up

Check it out from your library: Library Catalog

Recommended by: Barbara Talcroft
Barbara Talcroft reviews children’s books professionally for childrenslit.com and for Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database.  She has a Master’s degree in International Children’s Literature.  She also has many years’ experience as a teacher.  Barbara is one of the founders of LANTERN and its past chairperson.