Destination Veracruz

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-This serviceable book describes the port city on the Gulf of Mexico. Numerous full-color photographs show the various parts of the waterfront as well as the rest of the urban area. The toll of unbridled development on the environment is pointed out. The history of the Gulf Coast area is covered, from the early Olmec civilization through the European conquest right up to the 1994 NAFTA agreement. The third section of the book, "Veracruz at Work," is crammed with statistics on imports and exports, etc., and includes a generally evenhanded discussion of international trade, economic systems, and free trade. Life in the city is described, along with places and events of interest. A brief glossary and a pronunciation guide for Spanish words and phrases, and a metric-conversion chart, useful for a book with so many statistics, are included. Mary J. Reilly's Mexico (Benchmark, 1991) and R. Conrad Stein's Mexico-A Golden Past, A Hopeful Future (Dillon, 1996) mention Veracruz very briefly or not at all. Mexico City gets fuller treatment in a livelier format in R. Conrad Stein's Mexico City (Children's, 1996). An interesting source for reports.-Pam Gosner, formerly at Maplewood Memorial Library, NJ