The Street Beneath My Feet by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer
| The Street Beneath My Feet by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer | |
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| Category: Children's Non-Fiction | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: Clearly a labour of love, this tour through the planet's layers and out the other side will certainly show the young explorer a host of sights they can't realistically hope to see. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 20 | Date: March 2017 |
| Publisher: Words & Pictures | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781784937317 | |
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It's one thing for a non-fiction book for the young to show them something they themselves can explore – the pattern of the stars, perhaps, or the life in their back yard. But when it gets to things that are equally important to know about but are impossible to see in real life, why, then the game is changed. The artistic imagination has to be key, in portraying the invisible, and presenting what can only come from the pages of a book. And this example does it at its best, as it delves into the layers of the soil below said back yard, down and down, through all the different kinds of rock, until we reach the unattainable centre of the planet. And there's only one way to go from there – back out the other side, with yet more for us to be shown. It's a fantastic journey, then – and a quite fantastic volume.
First things first, you can more or less ignore the page count in that box to the side. The key number you need to deal with is two. One sheet of this book is the journey from the pavement to the earth's core, and the second is the opposite trip back up. That said, it's a page and a half. As I type, the top of the book is on my pillow, and the bottom is dangling off the bottom of our bed. Each 'page' is actually ten landscape panels, joined seamlessly in a masterclass of engineering, to provide a full mapping-out of the direction the book takes.
But you don't have to be as ungainly as to spread the whole thing out – each panel is more or less self-contained. Yes, the subterranean cave is on two different pages, so the stalactites are on one sheet and you turn over for the stalagmites. But here is a self-contained page of the service industries we cannot take for granted (cabling, water pipes, etc), here the coal seam, here the sleepy animals in their burrows (presented upside down, as we're coming out the other side by now).
Inside the back cover is the typical cross-section of the planet, showing the depth of the various layers in proportion. But elsewhere we handily lose such scientific veracity, for something much more appealing – humanity, and wonder. The personal touch of the art is great, cartoonishly putting the whole creation story of that coal I mentioned into one graphic, and doing what no attempt at authenticity could really do. The script, too, has a chatty sort of warmth to it, meaning no young pioneer will baulk at turning to this book, whether from off the school or home shelf. It asks us to count various things along the way, but I doubt such encouragement is really needed to go on this exploratory trip.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
I also really liked Under Earth, Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielinski, Daniel Mizielinski and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator), as it delves through soil, rock and water – but it lacks the full, non-stop chain of the volume at hand. The artist here also provided us with a jumbo-sized look at some nasty animals recently, with The Big Book of Beasts.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Street Beneath My Feet by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Street Beneath My Feet by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer at Amazon.com.
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