Customer Reviews

Away from Home

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I used this book in my first and second grade classrooms. We would sit in front of a large wall map and then read a page at a time. Next we would find the city or country on the map. Some clues were occasionally needed but most of the time some students would know that London is in England, or Paris is in France. Yes, Uxmal and Xian were a little difficult but since I had been to both of these places plus 13 other places included in this book I could add some interesting details. We didn't try to do the whole book in one sitting. Our class also had e-mail contacts with schools in Wales, Canada, Australia, Africa, Mexico plus several across the U.S. so we may have had an additional interest in the world around us.

My 10 month old son really enjoys this book. The format is nice, with large pages, little writing and great pictures. I bought it because I want him to be exposed to many parts of the world and its people. But a few things trouble me: 1) Why are only the boys traveling to the exotic places and the little girls just sit in the audience? 2)Why are there no locations in Africa? There is good diversity of the little boys and girls, but it seems the places could have been a little more representative of the globe. I think Ms. Lobel could have lost Tulsa and substituted Timbuktu. 3) The letter C is very disturbing - "Craig crawled in Cracow". And Craig has a Star of David on his hat. What are we to think of this? Is this implying that Jews should be crawling? Or is it some sort of not-so-subtle historical reference with no context within which to interpret it? I find it a little out of place in a childs book. Let us worry about explaining man's inhumanity to man when the kids are a little older please.

In summary, a nice book, but I really have trouble getting past these items.