Planes; Trucks; Boats
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Cover Story
This issue's cover is a photograph of Anne Frank whose diary is discussed by Michael Rosen fifty years after its first publication. Following the arrest of the Frank family and their companions, the secret annex in Amsterdam where they had been in hiding was locked up and everybody forbidden to enter it, since Jewish possessions became Nazi property and were carted away. Before this happened, the young woman, Miep Gies, who had provided those in hiding with food and who had a second key to the annex, risked herself once more by entering it. Miep retrieved Anne's diary from the devastation together with the Frank family photograph album.
Thanks to Penguin Children's Books for help in reproducing this cover.
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Planes
Trucks
Boats
Pienkowski's picture books (Meg and Mog, etc.) with their brightly coloured, boldly outlined pictures, are models of clarity and simplicity.
These three pop-up titles are in this same style but with paper engineering to add movement to the pictures. There is nothing complicated about the mechanics -just opening the page will cause the boat to rock in the waves or the space shuttle to take off - so the usual disappointments of broken tabs or sticking levers are avoided.
A variety of boats and trucks is explored in two of the books - the children in my school especially liked the breakdown truck which really lifts the car being towed - but Planes is rather a misnomer since it includes a hot air balloon, a helicopter and the space shuttle -perhaps flying machines would have been a better title. Whatever, these are excellent and entertaining books for toddlers learning to name things and thoroughly recommended for Nursery and Reception children too.
