cover image This Way, Watson! A Map and Directions Primer

This Way, Watson! A Map and Directions Primer

Claudia Pearson. Gibbs Smith, $12.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-4236-4765-2

A scruffy gray dog named Watson joins his friend Scout, a pigeon, for a biking tour of their neighborhood. Though presented as a book about maps (an overhead map of the area with a legend appears on the opening spread), the text focuses more on prepositions and opposites. The structure and meter of the rhyming text can get rocky (“To find a good book, it’s at the library we stop./ Can you find books on the bottom and books on the top?”) but Pearson’s digital collages offer chic perspectives on the town’s brownstone-lined parks, a bakery teeming with tasty-looking baked goods, and an airy museum featuring for an Egyptian sarcophagus and Calderesque mobile. Ages 2–5. (Aug.)