The Street Beneath My Feet
by Charlotte Guillain; illus. by Yuval Zommer
Primary, Intermediate    Quarto    24 pp.
5/17    978-1-68297-136-9    $22.95

Turn the sturdy pages of this large book from bottom to top for an accordion-folded journey to the center of the Earth. Successive vertical spreads show readers the layers of animal, vegetable, and mineral life all the way down to the inner core; now begin again from the end to head back up, seeing some of the same sights but many new ones on the return journey to the surface on the other side of the world. The earth science is simple but made glorious by the illustrations, homely and fantastic at once, as in a picture of a subway car, headlights streaming, above a layer of sedimentary rock and, further below, caves with spiky stalactites and stalagmites. The pictures are packed with detail, but each one says adventure — look, diamonds! — as much as education.

From the July/August 2017 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.