Another generation of children are enjoying Miroslav Sasek's classic "This is..." series of books. Eighteen in all, they introduce children to the people, customs and places of interest in cities and countries around the world. The text might seem a quaint today, but it's the illustrations that really steal the show.
Using vibrant color and stylized drawing, Sasek captures the personality and flavor of each city or country in a way that appeals to both children and adults.
Originally intended to do just three This is books, Sasek kept going when they were received with such critical and popular success.
The series began with This is Paris in 1959 and ended in 1974 with This is Historic England. In between were books on London, Rome, New York, Edinburgh, Munich, Venice, San Francisco, Israel, Cape Canaveral, Ireland, Hong Kong, Greece, Texas, the United Nations, Washington D.C. and Australia.
[Editor's note: this post was originally published in August, 2007]
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we have a couple of these books. is it terrible that i won't let the boys play with them? i just want them to stay nice until they're older!
My daughter received the New York one as a gift from her godfather (who lives in NYC) and she likes it almost as much as her parents. I have added the others to the ongoing book list that we have for her. They are books that grow with the child then become treasured for the illustrations
My folks traveled when I was a kid and grabbed a copy of each country we visited - happy memories!!!
my sister (who lives in NYC) gave my now 5-year-old the New York book. We have an expedit full of kids books and abouty 4 boxes on top of that... He always reaches for M Sasek!
We have the Edinburgh book, and I'd love to pick up some of the others. My son is not even two, and the text is way over his head, but he loves the illustrations. We just paraphrase what is going on in the illustrations. He calls it his "castle book."
my mother has a This is Rome. I was facinated with the Mouth of Truth. I still want to stick my hand in it today and see if it eats my hand.
The text is quite dated but the illustrations are lovely. And my toddler doesn't really care about the "mistakes" in population size any way...
We got This is New York just before we moved to NYC (as part of a literary effort to prepare my then 2 1/2 year old for the move from suburban VA to central Queens). She loves that book, and I really thought I was buying it for me. Her aunt lives in San Francisco and sent us a copy of that one. The copies we have contain an updated section in the back, so I can fill in the correct info when I read it, which is nice. Next I really want to get a copy of This is Paris, since it is my namesake city!