Subway
-
-
4.7 • 19 Ratings
-
-
- $2.99
-
- $2.99
Publisher Description
Speed. Color. Sound. Numbers. Maps. Connections. Navigation. Subway systems may be specific to certain cities around the world, but the pure thrill of a subway ride is universal to all young children.
Christoph Niemann’s graphically elegant and playful picture book is a tour de force for preschoolers and a stellar addition to the canon of books about trains, trucks, planes, and automobiles.
Based on the author’s own underground adventures with his young boys—chronicled for adult readers in Niemann’s New York Times blog, Abstract City—this innovative picture book is an invitation down underground, where a system of trains and tracks delivers millions of riders to their destinations each day.
“Underneath the city is this beautifully simple system of letters, numbers, and colors. The trains and stations are huge and impressive but also comforting, because nothing ever changes. My boys are in charge; they can read the signs, navigate the grid, and they always know what happens next.”—Christoph Niemann
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Niemann (The Pet Dragon) navigates New York's subterranean system in this playful love letter to public transportation. Readers follow two children and their father, pictured as transit map style stick figures, who spend a rainy day exploring routes. "Riding the A requires some patience/ if you plan to visit all forty-four stations," they advise. The trains occasionally acquire some light personification ("The 7 is on his way to meet... / his friends at Times Square, 42nd Street!"); after the F and G lines separate at Bergen Street, "The G says, 'Don't cry. I will meet you/ again at Roosevelt Avenue!"). The tone is largely celebratory rate hikes and construction don't come up but Niemann finds pleasure in unexpected places, too ("There are plenty of critters on the tracks of the J/ enjoying the subway all night and all day"). His folksy gouaches are color-coded to match the various subway lines, and his pitchblack backdrops make the colors explode, while alluding to tunnel interiors. An abundance of droll details will delight regular straphangers and stir the imaginations of transportation-obsessed children. Ages 2 5.
Customer Reviews
Subway
I love the book very much! I love trains a lot! Plus I am a train rail fanner. So I film trains going up and down the track.