Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building

K-Gr 3--A clever introduction to architecture. Each spread shows children playing on one side and a photograph of a famous building on the other. The children, done with watercolor in a fairly standard illustrative style, are pictured working with toys that mirror the form of the featured buildings. For example, a baby's stacking rings are shown opposite the Guggenheim Museum, and wooden blocks mirror the shape of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. Each spread also contains a short poem, many rhyming, that describes the youngster's play. The poems are printed in large font and are typeset to complement the shape of the architecture pictured. They are age appropriate and well crafted; for example, the one for the Montreal Biosphere reads, "Easy peasy as can be/toothpicks joining one, two, three." Back matter includes brief paragraphs about each building and mini portraits and paragraphs about the architects, who come from a variety of countries; most are men. This book is more accessible than J. Patrick Lewis's Monumental Verse (National Geographic, 2005) or a more factual text like Culture in Action: Architecture (Raintree, 2009) and is a good precursor for either of them.--Donna Cardon, Provo City Library, UT