Cars (Look Inside Cross-Sections)

Informative text combines with meticulously detailed, full-color, cross-sectional illustrations to help curious youngsters learn what goes on inside of an automobile, offering fascinating images and information about everything from the wheels to the engine. Original.

Grade 4-6-Intended for casual browsing, these slim volumes feature cutaway illustrations, haphazardly labeled and surrounded by brief comments or anecdotes. A dozen spacecraft float through Space, from a Mercury capsule to the Hubble telescope, including Voskhod 2 and an Ariane rocket; the Cars depicted are evenly split between racing models and classics like the Austin Mini and a '57 Cadillac. The illustrators attempt to add individuality to each scene with human figures-a female astronaut demonstrates the "Manned (!) Maneuvering Unit," for instance, and a wounded soldier lies in the jeep-but much of the fine detail has been simplified, and the paintings have a generic look. Snippets of historical information and performance data make up the text; labels use mostly Americans terms (but mufflers are called "exhaust silencers"). Adequate, if unspectacular, alternatives to the "Easy Read Fact Books" (Watts) and other lookalike series.
John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.