Around the World Alphabet
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Cover Story
The illustration on our cover is by Michael Hague and is taken from Peter Pan by J M Barrie (Methuen, 0 416 09392 2 £9.95). We are grateful to Methuen for help in using this illustration.
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Send to friendAround the World Alphabet
A nice idea, to take the conventional 'A is for...' formula and use it to take a trip round the world, looking at such diverse cultures as the Chinese, Ojibwa and Welsh. A problem arises though then 'A is for Australian' is combined with a picture of an 'Aborigine painting on eucalyptus bark'.
Such simplistic and often stereotypical impressions (do Scotsmen really spend a lot of time 'throwing the weight at a Highland games'?) are inevitable, perhaps, in a book which deals with 26 countries in 21 pages and 26 sentences and drawings, but some unfortunate impressions are created - such as that all black people wear native dress and pick bananas or live in mud huts.
Dinosaur has a good record of multi-cultural diversity in their books; but this is not one of their happier efforts.
