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City Signs

by Zoran Milich

Although this book’s photos were taken in cities, preschoolers from communities of all sizes will recognize and relate to the objects and concepts portrayed. Thirty colourful camera shots illustrate the way we use letters, symbols, shapes, and colours to communicate important messages and helpful information.

City Signs is Zoran Milich’s second picture book. His first, The City ABC Book, which asks readers to search for alphabet shapes in urban photos, earned a mention on CBC Radio’s children’s panel and other reviewers’ hit lists. Fans of the first book will find this new work less obviously interactive. Its format and design strongly resemble award-winning American photographer Tana Hoban’s successful picture books about signs and symbols.

Framed by wide white borders, Milich’s city photos capture street, park, pool, and beach signs. There are pictures of emergency and other transportation vehicles, people who are community helpers, and storefront, directional, and cautionary signage. Signs appear on vehicles, buildings, posts, walls, windows, containers, booths, fences, and people. Eagle-eyed viewers will discover that Milich took many of the photographs in New York and Ontario.

This attractive early learning and reading resource is an ideal fit for public library collections and programs focused on early childhood and family literacy. Creative types will invite children to match the front cover’s checkerboard photos with their full-page counterparts, to seek out words, letters, shapes, and colours that appear on more than one page, to find pictures that “show” motion, and, of course, to watch for the signs during walks and drives.

 

Reviewer: Patty Lawlor

Publisher: Kids Can Press

DETAILS

Price: $16.95

Page Count: 32 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 1-55337-003-1

Released: Aug.

Issue Date: 2002-8

Categories: Picture Books

Age Range: ages 2-5