Synopsis
“Happy Birthday, Tin Lizzie! Let’s go!” shouts Grandpa as his one-hundred-year-old car explodes into life. The children jump aboard the vintage Model T Ford that they have helped him to restore, and a celebration road trip begins. “You gotta have wheels!” Grandpa cries. But as traffic jams build, the children begin to ask serious questions about cars and the problems that have developed: overcrowded roads, pollution, and oil-dependency.
Animated illustrations and jaunty prose combine history and a thought-provoking look at the motor-obsessed world of today. Endpapers depict the evolution of cars from the late nineteenth century to the present, and the book concludes with a brief pictorial biography of Henry Ford, followed by a spread of images illustrating problems and possible solutions.
Publishers Weekly
Drummond (Liberty!) presents a lively, child-friendly cost-benefit analysis of the automobile with a book commemorating the 100th birthday of Henry Ford's Model T. The narrator, nicknamed Lizzie by her grandfather, loves wheels, from her baby carriage to her grandfather's lovingly restored Tin Lizzie. Piling in with her three younger brothers, Lizzie finally gets a spin in the car that popularized automobile travel. As they sit in traffic, however, Lizzie asks, "Grandpa, why are there so many cars?" and so begins an affable debate. Grandpa sees cars as a symbol of progress; Lizzie enumerates their drawbacks. Cartoon-style vignettes of vehicles (and traffic jams) zip horizontally across these spreads, keeping the visuals in tune with the brisk dialogue and warding off the didacticism that creeps in, especially when Lizzie is talking. An afterword challenges readers to ponder for themselves the consequences of our culture's obsession with cars. Ages 5-8. (June)
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