Look-alikes around the world

Joan Steiner's Look-Alikes: Around the World, the fourth in the series, offers a remarkable re-imagining of sites around the globe. Depicted as a series of postcards, the landscapes are created from a wide assortment of everyday objects. Cookies and staples combine to form the Leaning Tower of Pisa, while the Taj Mahal is comprised of recorders, children's shoes and onion domes made from... onions. (Little, Brown, $15.99 40p ages 3-6 ISBN 9780-316-81172-9; Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Again showing her genius for turning found materials into realistic structures and scenes, Steiner conducts viewers on a world tour, from the sliced-bread-and-peanut-butter terraces of Machu Picchu to the Leaning Tower of Cookies. Each of the 39 stops is shown on a postcard or luggage sticker, and each spread comes with an identifying caption ("Everyone should visit Paris in the spring") and, for seek-and-find aficionados, the total number (which usually runs to dozens) of different items to spot. Closing with itemized lists and brief comments on the places she depicts, the author offers up another creative, riveting outing--though the photographer, Ogden Gigli, deserves more credit than a mention in the acknowledgements for making the water actually look wet, the settings natural and the monuments monumental. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.