Small Worlds: Maps and Mapmaking

From ancient maps to computer maps, kids learn the language, function, and beauty of maps. Profiles of mapmakers highlight this unusual career. A beautifully designed four-color tour of the topic.

Walking tour maps, brain scans, satellite maps and subway maps show large and small worlds on flat surfaces. Kids learn how maps are put together in layers like sandwiches, how to use a map to get oriented, and the use of hundreds of different maps. They meet mapmakers who personalize the art of cartography.
Karen Romano Young was a PW Flying Start. She is the author of several novels and nonfiction books. Her excitement about maps is contagious.

Grade 7 Up-Young begins by describing a flight in to Chicago's O'Hare Airport and how a map of the terminal (shown in full-page illustration) helped her get through the huge building and find her connecting gate. This incident sets the tone for the rest of the book, which, through numerous color drawings, reproductions, and photographs, takes readers on a tour of the many different kinds of maps that help people to navigate neighborhoods, cities, states, the globe, or even outer space. The technical aspects of cartography such as the use of scale, color, and overlays are explained, again with ample illustrations and examples. This book also gives a history of mapmaking and shows all the difficulties that early geographers encountered when attempting to create a graphic representation of the world. How scientists in the 1700s solved the problem of charting longitude is also explained. This is a worthy addition to any geography section. Barbara Taylor's Maps and Mapping (Kingfisher, 1993) is a good choice for younger readers.
David Pauli, Hillsboro Public Library, OR
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.