TICKETS TO RIDE: AN ALPHABET AMUSEMENT

Grade 1-4–In Dizzyland, Rogalski's picture-book amusement park, there's a ride to match each letter of the alphabet. Some of them look playful and fun, such as Monkey Monorail and Yak Kayak; but many are bizarre and incomprehensible (Iguana's Ice Show and Little Queen Bee) and a few, including Vampire Village and Night Crawler Coaster, seem creepy and sinister. A ticket, written in hackneyed verse, accompanies each ride. There's a hidden number and an animal in each illustration, and a detailed map of the park is included. As an alphabet book, this falls short, but fans of literary puzzle books, such as Martin Handford's Where's Waldo (Candlewick) and Jean Marzollo's I Spy series (Scholastic), may appreciate Rogalski's effort for its visual whimsy and fanciful design.–Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA
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In this fantasmagoric children's book debut, subtitled "An Alphabetic Amusement," the alphabet serves only to impose some order on Rogalski's imagination. With solid competence in computer animation techniques, he fashions 26 amusement park rides. Each stars a slick, fabricated mechanical animal, from the kiddie Bumper Bears cars to the Zebra Zeppelin. Each ride appears on a full-page plate on the right-hand page, while a small, intricately designed ticket for the ride appears on the left. The skeletal text on the tickets is slap-dash: "Though not from Yale/ Ole Woodrow Whale/ Will always pass the test." But visually, the tickets show Rogalski's fascination with throwaway paper from the 1950s and '60s; the fonts, borders and colors all mimic the printed material found at amusements and parks of the era. (The book's signal achievement is a map in the back that purports to show the whole amusement park; even its folds are carefully reproduced, and the corners convincingly chipped.) A final spread on which all the rides appear in thumbnail images instructs readers to go back through the book and find a number and the image of a duck in each picture. The first trip through the book is entertaining; the second is genuinely absorbing. All ages. (Oct.)
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