C is for City [Paperback]

Nikki Grimes (Author), Pat Cummings (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2002 | Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up

See, hear, smell, and taste the many delights of a big city. Nikki Grimes and Pat Cummings are your guides to an alphabet adventure that takes readers--and visitors--from an art show to the zoo on one whirlwind tour. Full color.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 3?In this rhyming alphabet book, each letter represents different New York City experiences?e.g., "A is for arcade or ads for apartments.../B is for butcher or/breakfast with bagels/or block-party bands/out on hot summer nights. C is for city/or cabbies named Clarence/or cool cats who chat/under boulevard lights." Many of the arresting images reflect the ethnic, religious, and economic diversity of urban life. From a sleek sports car with a bejeweled Afghan to tawdry fortune tellers and other entertainers, a wide range of people and neighborhoods are depicted. The rhythm of the verses is also varied, but it is always interesting and right on target for the audience. Illustrations in vivid, neon colors suggest the electricity and brashness of a loud city with its hard edges as well as the teeming population. In addition to the letter-specific items mentioned, others are incorporated into the pictures for sharp-eyed viewers to find. An entertaining selection along the lines of "A my name is Alice," set in the Big Apple.?Sally R. Dow, Ossining Public Library, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Ages 4 and up. City is the operative word in this hustling, bustling, urban ABC book. It begins, "A is for arcade or ads for Apartments / on short streets with alleys alive with stray pets. / A is for Afghans named after their owners / who drive them to art shows in silver Corvettes." Cummings' lively cartoonish illustrations depict all of these a words, plus countless more tucked in for the keen-eyed reader. (A key in the back of the book lists all illustrated objects.) The rhymes themselves are quite clever and packed with vocabulary-expanding images. Each illustration is a hearty slice of urban life, with all its intersecting dramas and scenes within scenes. At a diner, for instance, four different dramas play out, including a doorman jumping double-Dutch and a teen flirting with the waitress. Certainly city children will identify with the book, but any child should find in its busy illustrations much worth discussing or poring over alone. Julie Yates Walton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Paperback: 40 pages
• Publisher: Wordsong (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590780132
• ISBN-13: 978-1590780138
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 9.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #820,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nikki Grimes conveyed the fire-in-the-belly fervor of a Harlem girl who knows she was born to write in Jazmin's Notebook, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. In My Man Blue, a Booklist Editor's Choice and Newsweek Children's Books of the Year selection, her artful words expressed a boy's journey from skepticism to trust. And now with Bronx Masquerade she presents a rich chorus of eighteen voices, singing openly about ideas, feelings, and questions--things that open minds, invite debate, provide release. A recent Booklist review proclaims: "As always, Grimes gives young people exactly what they're looking for--real characters who show them they are not alone."An accomplished poet, novelist, journalist, and educator, Ms. Grimes was born and raised in New York City and now lives in the Los Angeles area.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars C is for City. That's good enough for me., October 5, 2004

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: C is for City (Paperback)

C is for city. Which is to say, New York City. At least that's the impression you'll receive after reading Nikki Grimes's eclectic alphabet book. Picture books have learned something that Sesame Street knew years ago. Mainly, that kids dig cityscapes filled with letters and numbers. As a result, "C Is For City" is a metropolitan dive into the beauty and excitement of the New York City streets. It's a kickin' little number that teaches kids their alphabetic basics while giving them a taste of the high life. Even suburbanites will enjoy it.

The best way to give you a sense of this concoction is to describe to you the first two pages. In them you've a fancy lady and her dog driving along a city scene that is both grimy and opulent. The words on the page read, "A is for arcade or ads for apartments/ on short streets with alleys alive with stray pets/ A is for Afghans named after their owners/ who drive them to art shows in silver Corvettes". In the pictures kids can find a variety of different things that all begin with the letter "a". Then they can flip to the last page in this book and see if they truly found all the "a" related objects. Each page or two page spread in the book is like this. Sometimes they sport a huge amount of objects. Other times, there are only a few. Through it all, Grimes's catchy well-paced alphabetic poems give clues to the various letters in each and every illustration. By the end of the book you find you've just taken a whirlwind tour through offices, operas, parks, parades, shops, streets, and every imaginable New York cityscape. It's surprisingly exhausting.

It shouldn't surprise much of anybody that Nikki Grimes has written such catchy four line poems. Best known, perhaps, for her young adult novel, "Bronx Masquerade", Grimes is adept at poetic license and creation. Fortunately for her she's been paired with the multi-talented Pat Cummings. Cummings has packed each page with original situations and multi-racial characters. Everyone from snooty ladies walking their poodles to Hasidim in their black garb traverse the pages of this book. Kids reading this story should make sure to try to find the little black cat that pops up in each and every spread. He's a sneaky one. The book was originally written in 1995, but even though the pictures show almost every well-known New York landmark (everything from the Washington Square Arch to the Empire State Building), the Twin Towers are nowhere in sight. Quite by accident, parents everywhere have been saved the necessity of explaining the Towers' significance to their four-year-olds. Remarkable.

Now I'll admit why I didn't give this puppy five stars. It's basically an unfair reason, but one that I'm unable to break away from. Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Graeme Base's, "Animalia" will note the similarities between that picture book, and this one. And of the two, "Animalia" is the better written and illustrated. So if you want to get your hands on the best alphabetic-find-all-the-objects-slash-animals-beginning-with-a-particular-letter book, this is not the one to purchase. But if you want TWO of the same kind, kindly locate and whisk away Grimes's, "C Is For City". It's definitely an exciting way to present the normally hum-drum alphabet. Consider pairing it with Nina Crews's, "The Neighborhood Mother Goose" for a particularly urban storytime.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great pictures of my own city, October 22, 2009

By 

Ulyyf "Connie" (NYC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: C is for City (Library Binding)

Now, before I even get started, I want to thank the author of this book for showing a picture of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Our copy of ABC NYC listed only "vendors" for V, and I was very disappointed because, well, the Verrazano is a pretty bridge and I've been looking at it as my touchstone since I was a kid. So seeing it in a picture book, the very same bridge my nieces can see from their mother's window or walking along the water - it's special to me.

That doesn't affect my rating, it's just incidental.

This book isn't an alphabet book that happens to have a citified theme, it's an ode to NYC that happens to be written in abecedarian format. And as odes to the city go, this one is pretty great. The author caught a lot of different events and scenes, and the scenes included an appropriate amount of diversity, something you don't always see in picture books. It really was like looking at my own home :)

Only thing? It's not so much like looking at my home NOW. The pictures are a bit dated, they look more like NYC when I was a kid. And so this book *was* published when I was a kid, so that makes sense, but it did make me feel slightly awkward reading it... kinda like when you look at your high school yearbook and cringe at what you thought of as good fashion choices, you know?