This wordless picture history traces the evolution of an English main street from medieval times to the present.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In another of Goodall's outstanding wordless picture books, the artist traces the evolution of an English Main Street. Medieval wattle-and-daub houses give way to overhanging Tudor structures, which in turn are replaced by the buildings of succeeding eras up through the present. Goodall's watercolors portray Main Street, in all its incarnations, as a vital, dynamic center of activity. Intimate, close-up views of shop and coffeehouse interiors complement and extend the wider, panoramic street scenes. A work that offers a broad historical overview of architecture, fashion and customs, it is also one to pore over for fine detail: a Georgian barber lathering his client's beard, strings of sausages hanging from the beams of a Victorian general store and a shop window advertising "monkey brand soap" are only a few of the many delights to be gleaned from repeated readings. All ages.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Gr 2 Up As in The Story of a Castle (1986) and The Story of an English Village (1979, both Macmillan), Goodall's eye for historical detail and his talent for making the past relevantly alive combine to act as an animating lens. This time the focus is the Main Street, the pathway, even in Medieval times (when this story begins), where daily business is transacted. People costumed according to period, class, and season go about their mundane tasks, and viewers are street level voyeurs pleasantly and leisurely taking it all in and learning odd bits of information about lifestyles, architecture, modes of transportation, even some relationships between the sexes. The half-page flips are used here at times to bring viewers into a shop first depicted from the street and, at others, to move the action forward into time. A stone market cross is the anchor, remaining unmoved and unchanging while all else evolves and revolves around it. Goodall creates scores of people that suggest rather than specify; they are no more important than other items in these engaging tableaux. Watercolors and a deft pencil are all that he uses to create a superbly crowded Edwardian shop at Christmas or to enliven an Elizabethan autumn street scene. Surely a very special slice through time without the dirt, hunger, or death, yet this version of history is not at all sentimentalized, maybe only a bit sanitized. Lots of fine looking here for all. Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State University, Columbus
Copyright 1987 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
children's history book - sort of,
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This review is from: Story Of A Main Street, The (Margaret Mcelderry) (Hardcover)
Another Goodall that give us a little picture of life in England in this time period.
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