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U.S. People & Places - Miscellaneous, Fiction - General & Miscellaneous, U.S. Holidays, United States - Patriotism
Americana Adventure by Michael Garland β€” book cover

Americana Adventure

by Michael Garland
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Overview

Celebrate the Fourth of July in a vibrant seek-and-find adventure.

This fun-filled ode to America brims with patriotic spirit and more than 200 hidden objects to find.

Tommy, star of the bestselling Look Again series, awakes on July Fourth to find a note from his eccentric Aunt Jeanne, promising a spectacular surprise if he unravels clues she has hidden for him. Tommy's clues lead him on a magical cross-country trip through America's great places and iconic traditions. From Times Square to Mount Rushmore, from a Mississippi riverboat to the Golden Gate Bridge, spectacular scenery and colorful details are sure to delight eagle-eyed young readers.

Synopsis

Celebrate the Fourth of July in a vibrant seek-and-find adventure.

This fun-filled ode to America brims with patriotic spirit and more than 200 hidden objects to find.

Tommy, star of the bestselling Look Again series, awakes on July Fourth to find a note from his eccentric Aunt Jeanne, promising a spectacular surprise if he unravels clues she has hidden for him. Tommy's clues lead him on a magical cross-country trip through America's great places and iconic traditions. From Times Square to Mount Rushmore, from a Mississippi riverboat to the Golden Gate Bridge, spectacular scenery and colorful details are sure to delight eagle-eyed young readers.

School Library Journal

Gr 1-6- This book takes the search-and-find game to a new level, providing a fun entry into history. An opening rhyme gives readers an overview of all they're meant to find on these animated pages. They are asked to count the Uncle Sam hats, find the bald eagles, and identify all of the presidents. The faces of other famous Americans are also identifiable, such as Babe Ruth, Elvis, and Henry Ford. The final two pages list all of the individuals depicted, the authors of various quotes, and clues to the puzzles. The book is set up like a treasure hunt, a party game with clues from Aunt Jeanne as she leads her nephew around the country. Each page focuses on a new sight, be it a city such as New York, Boston, or San Francisco, or a place-a ballpark, a rodeo, or Mount Rushmore. The illustrations are delightful, full of energy, color, and thoughtful composition. They are jumbled but not random. Most of the people have cartoon faces, smooth and round and sweet, but interspersed among them as part of the crowd are true-to-life portraits-Louis Armstrong plays his horn on a riverboat and John Wayne watches the rodeo. Young readers will be engaged by all there is to search and find among these pages. This could be a treasured stepping stone to a greater understanding of American culture and history.-Martha Topol, Traverse Heights Elementary School, MI

About the Author, Michael Garland

Michael Garland is the author and illustrator of numerous books for young readers. He lives in Patterson, New York.

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Editorials

School Library Journal

Gr 1-6- This book takes the search-and-find game to a new level, providing a fun entry into history. An opening rhyme gives readers an overview of all they're meant to find on these animated pages. They are asked to count the Uncle Sam hats, find the bald eagles, and identify all of the presidents. The faces of other famous Americans are also identifiable, such as Babe Ruth, Elvis, and Henry Ford. The final two pages list all of the individuals depicted, the authors of various quotes, and clues to the puzzles. The book is set up like a treasure hunt, a party game with clues from Aunt Jeanne as she leads her nephew around the country. Each page focuses on a new sight, be it a city such as New York, Boston, or San Francisco, or a place-a ballpark, a rodeo, or Mount Rushmore. The illustrations are delightful, full of energy, color, and thoughtful composition. They are jumbled but not random. Most of the people have cartoon faces, smooth and round and sweet, but interspersed among them as part of the crowd are true-to-life portraits-Louis Armstrong plays his horn on a riverboat and John Wayne watches the rodeo. Young readers will be engaged by all there is to search and find among these pages. This could be a treasured stepping stone to a greater understanding of American culture and history.-Martha Topol, Traverse Heights Elementary School, MI

Kirkus Reviews

Garland's attempt to conduct a seek-and-find tour across the United States and through its history quickly collapses into a confusing jumble of faces, places and quotes. A perfunctory plotline provides an everylad with a rhymed itinerary that leads from the Liberty Bell to San Francisco-but many of the stops along the way are either generic or random collages of iconic images from various decades. Each stop is also crowded with full-bleed mixes of digitally painted bystanders and portraits of historical figures, snatches of rock 'n' roll lyrics, coins, eagles and the occasional (adult) book title. The presidents all show up in one scene or another, captioned with nicknames like "Sword of the Revolution" for George Washington, or "Poppy" and "Dubya" for the Bushes. Rather than provide a visual key at the end, the author supplies a hard-to-use subject index. Unlike Peter Spier's Train of States (2004) or Dan Yaccarino's Go, Go, America! (2008), this is unlikely to provide children with either basic facts or more than a few moments of entertainment. (Picture book. 8-10)

Book Details

Published
May 1, 2008
Publisher
Penguin Group (USA)
Pages
32
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780525479451

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