Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 4^-8. In the Italian countryside, a woman releases a homing pigeon that carries a one-word answer to a paramour in nearby Rome. Rather than take a direct path, the pigeon opts for the scenic route and embarks on a dizzying aerial tour in and around the capital city. Soaring over the Aurelian Wall, it circles monuments like the Temple of Hercules and darts down through the Pantheon's dome before delivering its much-awaited message. A thin red line traces the pigeon's trajectory across the black-and-white double-page spreads, with a constantly changing perspective conveying the delirious sense of flight. Macaulay's latest celebration of architecture delights in showing how past and present coexist in this ancient city: an occasional traffic jam and construction site complement the beautiful antiquities. His verbal and visual humor is sly here, from the pun in the title to a scene at an outdoor cafewhere Leonardo da Vinci chats on a cell phone. A visual love letter to the city of Rome, the tour ends with six pages of maps, art, and text detailing the nearly two dozen sights along the way. A natural for classroom use and a terrific way to whet readers' appetite for Macaulay's earlier titles, such as City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction (1974). --Randy Meyer
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 UpMacaulay's trademark bird's-eye views of famous works of architecture become in this book the literal substance of the text. Modern Rome is seen through the skewed perspective of a homing pigeon's erratic flight through the city streets as she delivers a message to an artist in a garret. Darting and swooping above rooftops and into alleyways, the bird takes readers on a haphazard tour as it catches an overhead view of the Colosseum, sees churches aslant and turned upside down, sails into the sky above a piazza, and makes brief forays down cobbled streets to search for crumbs. Macaulay adds sly touches of humor to the pen-and-ink sketches, as voracious cats eye the pigeon and people pursue their chores and pleasures, oblivious of the bird's flight, which is indicated by a thin red line. The famous landmarks are here, perhaps seen only as a piece of a cornice, the columns of a structure, or a section of an ancient wall. The book includes a map of the city "As the pigeon flies" with each structure numbered, and an addendum shows the 22 featured buildings with a paragraph or two of interesting facts about each one. As a guidebook to modern Rome, Macaulay's sketchbook is unconventional and too sophisticated for young children, but for those with a knowledge of, or a yearning to see one of the great cities of the world, it is full of informative details and amusing incidents.Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Younger) A folklike story set in China tells of Mi Fei, an artist who skillfully paints the stories of gods and heroes on paper scrolls while living simply in his village, surrounded by loving neighbors. When alarming news comes that a great dragon has awakened from its hundred-years' sleep and is destroying the countryside, Mi Fei, at the villagers' behest, takes his scrolls and paints and journeys to the dragon's mountain. There, he encounters the fiery breath and lashing tail of the terrifying creature and learns that before the dragon can return to his slumber, someone must perform three tasks, or be devoured. Mi Fei is frightened, but clever, and he uses his beloved scrolls and his love for the people of his village to successfully complete the tasks. In the end, the gigantic dragon fades away until all that remains is a small paper version of himself. In an extraordinary feat of artistry, Sabuda uses the triple-page gate-fold illustrations both to relate the story in the style of Chinese scrolls and to capture the drama of the confrontation between the gentle artist and the awe-inspiring dragon. Each picture is cut from painted tissue paper created by Sabuda and placed on a background of handmade Japanese paper. The combination of the ever-increasing size of the dragon (climaxing in a picture of his teeth framing an entire spread) and the cleverness of Mi Fei creates a strong tale with plenty of action for the story-hour audience. h.b.z. Bob Graham Queenie, One of the Family; illus. by the author (Preschool, Younger) This warm family story begins on the opening endpapers as a bantam hen stands at the edge of a soft blue lake. Baby Caitlin and her mom and dad, walking in the countryside, soon spot the hen floundering in the lake, and Dad leaps in for a daring rescue. They warm the hen and bring her home, and "that might have been the end of the story...but it wasn't!" The hen, dubbed Queenie, soon becomes one of the family, taking over the dog's basket and witnessing Caitlin's first steps. But Caitlin's mom knows Queenie has another home, so the whole family sets off to return her to a nearby farm. "That might have been the end of the story...but it wasn't." Queenie returns each morning to lay a perfect brown egg in Bruno's basket, just right for Caitlin's breakfast or for baking a birthday cake. When a new baby arrives and Caitlin forgets to collect the eggs, Bruno hatches a litter of chicks. The immensely appealing animals and people are depicted in gentle watercolors with loose, comfortable lines. Th (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In another of his explorations of the traversal between A and B (Shortcut, 1995, and a detour: Why the Chicken Crossed the Road, 1987), Macaulay takes the scenic route and concludes, perhaps, that all roads really do lead to Rome. This bird's-eye view of a grand city's architecture begins when a maiden ties a message onto the leg of a homing pigeon. Before readers can say S.P.Q.R., the pigeon has made the unusual decision of abstaining from the shortest path between two points in favor of a whirling flight through Rome. Macaulay has created a pen-and-ink sketchbook of ancient buildings in the modern city, stringing together black-and-white drawings of landmarks with the thinnest of red lines (to indicate the pigeon's flight). Along with labeled monuments are more mundane sightings: On the street, a dog drinks from a fire hydrant while conversations take place in cafes and on cell phones. The views of Rome are so encompassing that by the time the pigeon delivers its message to a draughtsman hunched over a drawing, readers have almost forgotten the bird's errand. ``Yes'' is the answer to an unstated question that hangs, tantalizingly, in the air. An aerial map of Rome (``not to scale'') and brief, conversational descriptions recap the highlights of the pigeon's trip. In it, Macaulay confirms that his is not a profession, nor an obsession, but a love affair of sketching and architecture. (Picture book. 7-11)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
