Action!: How Movies Began

McCarthy breezes through more than a century of cinematic history in this whirlwind tour of select technologies, genres, and films. Starting with Eadweard Muybridge's "The Horse in Motion," the book also touches on the creation of the Kinetograph, hand-tinted films, and talkies, as well as referencing key figures such as Josephine Baker, Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Edison, Buster Keaton, and the Lumière brothers. Embellished with oversize eyes, playful acrylic paintings have a cartoonlike appeal as McCarthy faithfully recreates stills from short clips and color-saturated moments from The Phantom of the Opera. Other spreads draw connections between classic and contemporary scenes (e.g., starring Charlie Chaplin and Johnny Depp) or make genre-specific comparisons. An author's note justifies the idiosyncratic high-level coverage, describing the book as a "jumping-off point." Extensive back matter concludes. Ages 5-8. (Aug.)