Lisa Doucet Reviews City Streets Are For People
City Streets Are For People
Andrea Curtis, illustrated by Emma Fitzgerald
Groundwood Books
(Ages 8-12)
City streets are remarkably busy places! While modern transportation vehicles rely largely on fossil fuels that are a major factor in global warming, it hasn’t always been this way and it doesn’t have to continue. Andrea Curtis provides fascinating information about the types of vehicles that have been used at different times and in different places. She discusses the importance of safe, affordable and efficient public transit options that don’t negatively impact the environment and that encourage people to spend less time in cars, and what is needed to create cities that are more pedestrian-friendly.
This is a thorough overview of the ways in which transportation affects all of our lives, impacts our individual cities as well as the global community as a whole and the many questions we need to contemplate as we envision new possibilities.
Informative and engaging, this book invites young readers to recognize that transportation is a key issue for many people, and the importance of providing options that meet peoples’ needs while also addressing the environmental impact that transit vehicles have had on our planet. Clearly written and accessible, the book also looks at the ways in which safer city streets create happier, healthier individuals and communities.
Emma Fitzgerald‘s whimsical and delightfully detailed illustrations perfectly depict the energy and vitality of these streets with their myriad of activities of daily life. The playful perspectives and deft linework create wonderfully dynamic and expressive scenes that are teeming with motion and life. Using thin, loose and sketchy lines and energetic compositions, Fitzgerald’s images manage to be both playful and instructive.
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