From my childhood (eons ago), I clearly recall my first weeks in fourth grade for a very particular reason. Same school, same group of classmates, same old-same old. Except for one very important thing. In fourth grade we were each assigned a copy of our own text books, signed out to each of us for an entire year. Up until then, our work/lessons were done through copying board work, writing on smelly-mimeo-sheets, or other ephemeral sources to support learning. We had used books-- reading, math, spelling, etc.-- but they were kept in stacks on side shelves and NEVER kept in our desks or (gasp!) taken home. Handing out and returning books for lessons was a prestigious job!
But now, as fourth graders, we were trusted with "our own" books, sort of: to keep in our desks, to take home at the end of the day! Granted, they were ancient and in varying degrees of terrible condition, which was carefully documented in annually updated notes on a card inside the front cover. We signed our names on that card and would be held accountable if the end-of-year condition of the book was worse than it was when we received it. Whew, no pressure!
Even so, they were "ours" for the year. My favorite of those books was GEOGRAPHY! That was the title. No doubt it had a subtext, or perhaps it did not. After all, we were only fourth graders. But I spent night after night at home, stretched out on my stomach with that GEOGRAPHY book open to any particular page, using colored pencils and the insides of paper grocery bags to replicate as accurately s possible whichever map intrigued me on that day. I labeled, and matched colors to the degree of exactness possible using a twelve pack of dull color pencils. Maps were amazing.
ALFRED A. KNOPF, 2024
With that elaborate personal introduction, I'm excited to share this new nonfiction picture book: THE SHAPE OF THINGS: How Mapmakers Picture Our World. It's written by Dean Robbins and illustrated by Matt Travares, and I wondered if either of them had ever discovered a love of maps as kids.
Jumping to the author and illustrator notes on back pages, I learned that Robbins was intrigued by the history of maps.Travares admits he had given very little thought to maps until getting this assignment. In the righteous tradition of picture book production, both have done loads of research and become fans of the subject matter as it worked its way toward becoming a bound object. I commend them both for their results, collaboratively launching countless young map-lovers into the world.The scope of this fact-packed but minimal text opens with endpapers revealing (we later learn) one of the most ancient relics of an Egyptian map on papyrus. The closing end pages show a map on a digital screen display on the dashboard of an automobile.
Between those covers are luminous images and lyrical accounts of the history, processes, tools, impacts, and remaining evidence of maps from the earliest examples carved into massive rocks or ivory artifacts, through stick-charts depicting ocean currents, right through to satellite images of our actual planet earth. One of my earliest learning memories from that GEOGRAPHY book and map transcription is the fact that boundaries are arbitrary and the glorious country and river colors were simply visual aids, not indicators of any other sigificance, not reflecting the physical world they portray in any way other than SHAPE..
This "Big Blue Marble" on which we reside and survive only vaguely resembles those earlier attempts, but time, technology, tools, and tenacity produced efforts explained in main text and noted on that timeline on closing pages. It's impressive evidence that I'm not the only one who is curious about, intrigued by, the shape of things on this planet we occupy. I hope you'll feel the same.
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