Jamaica

School Library Journal

Gr 1-3-- An overview that includes the country's weather, farming, schools, religion, homes, food, and transportation, all illustrated with full-color, captioned photographs. Scoones provides interest by featuring a dozen children who briefly relate aspects of their lives. They include urban and rural youngsters, Christians and Rastafarians; they are from rich, middle class, and poor backgrounds. Bright pictures show them at home and in their communities. While the testimonials all sound the same, leaving readers to wonder whose words they are, the technique helps youngsters imagine what life is like in this land. By featuring a variety of backgrounds, the author also shows some of the diversity of experiences, which is not true of A Family in Jamaica (Lerner, 1985) and similar books. Here, text, illustrations, and the comments work well together, providing a broad, simple, and generally effective portrait for this age group. Political conflicts and social controversies do not appear; the tone is positive and optimistic. Difficult words are highlighted and defined in an easy-to-use glossary. The list of further reading is geared to children; it and the index are useful tools for students conducting research on their own. --Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Siena College Library, Loudonville, NY